mac-contacts

name	mac-contacts
description	CLI for reading and managing macOS Contacts (CNContactStore). Supports searching by name, email, phone number, city, or country; showing all fields for a contact including list membership; creating and updating contacts with name, org, phone, email, and postal address; deleting contacts; and managing group (list) membership. Use when asked to look up, add, edit, remove, or organise contacts on macOS, or when you need a contact's phone number, email, address, or which lists they belong to.
compatibility	Requires macOS with Contacts access granted to Terminal/your agent host. Requires Python 3, pyobjc-framework-Contacts, and PyYAML (pip install pyobjc-framework-Contacts pyyaml).
metadata	{"author":"bdwelle"}

mac-contacts

macOS Contacts CLI backed by CNContactStore. All reads use unified contact views (iCloud + local + Exchange merged). All writes are atomic via CNSaveRequest. Group membership removal uses osascript to work around a silent no-op in CNSaveRequest.removeMember_fromGroup_ for iCloud-backed groups.

Dependencies

pip install pyobjc-framework-Contacts

pip install pyyaml

Grant Contacts access to Terminal (or your agent host) when prompted on first run, or via System Settings → Privacy & Security → Contacts.

Invocation

python3 skill://mac-contacts/scripts/mac-contacts.py <subcommand> [options]

All examples below use mac-contacts as shorthand for the full invocation.

---

Subcommands

search

Search contacts. With a positional query, performs a single-pass search across name, organisation, note, email, phone (digits normalised), and postal address fields. Use explicit flags to restrict to a specific field.

search [QUERY]
       [--list LIST]
       [--email EMAIL]
       [--phone PHONE]
       [--city CITY]
       [--country COUNTRY]

Flag	Description
QUERY	Comprehensive search across all fields. Phone digits are matched fuzzily (query digits must appear in contact's digit-stripped number; minimum 4 digits required for phone matching).
--list LIST	Return only contacts that are members of the named list/group.
--email EMAIL	Match by email address (uses the CNContact native email predicate — efficient).
--phone PHONE	Match by phone number; non-digit characters stripped before comparison. Minimum 4 digits.
--city CITY	Match by city in any postal address.
--country COUNTRY	Match by country in any postal address.

Examples:

# Comprehensive — finds by name, org, email, phone, address
mac-contacts search "John"
mac-contacts search "[e-mail]"   # auto-matches email
mac-contacts search "415-555"            # auto-matches phone (≥4 digits)
mac-contacts search "San Francisco"      # auto-matches city

# Explicit field targeting
mac-contacts search --email "[e-mail]"
mac-contacts search --phone "415"        # error: fewer than 4 digits
mac-contacts search --phone "4155551234"
mac-contacts search --city "London"
mac-contacts search --country "Germany"

# Filter to list members
mac-contacts search --list "Work"

Output per contact: name, organisation, phone(s), email(s), address(es).

---

show

Show every available field for a contact, including list membership.

show NAME

Output includes: full name (with prefix/middle/suffix), nickname, organisation, job title, department, phones, emails, postal addresses, URLs, social profiles, birthday, dates, note (if readable), and Lists.

mac-contacts show "Jane Doe"
mac-contacts show "Apple"        # matches any contact whose name contains "Apple"

Note: If multiple contacts match NAME, only the first result is shown.

---

create

Create a new contact. All flags except --first-name are optional.

create --first-name NAME
       [--last-name NAME]
       [--organization ORG]
       [--email EMAIL]     (repeatable)
       [--phone PHONE]     (repeatable)
       [--street STREET]
       [--city CITY]
       [--state STATE]
       [--zip ZIP]
       [--country COUNTRY]
       [--url URL]         (repeatable)
       [--birthday DATE]

mac-contacts create --first-name "Jane" --last-name "Doe" \
    --organization "Acme" \
    --email "[e-mail]" --email "[e-mail]" \
    --phone "415-555-0100" \
    --street "123 Main St" --city "San Francisco" \
    --state "CA" --zip "94102" --country "United States" \
    --url "https://jane.acme.com" \
    --birthday "1985-03-22"

Note: The --note flag is intentionally absent. Writing contact notes requires the com.apple.developer.contacts.notes entitlement, which Terminal-based tools do not hold.

--birthday format: YYYY-MM-DD for a full date (e.g. 1985-03-22), or --MM-DD to store month/day without a year (e.g. --03-22).

---

update

Update fields on an existing contact. Phone and email values are appended to existing values (not replaced). A new postal address block is appended if any address flag is provided.

update NAME
       [--organization ORG]
       [--email EMAIL]     (repeatable, appends)
       [--phone PHONE]     (repeatable, appends)
       [--street STREET]
       [--city CITY]
       [--state STATE]
       [--zip ZIP]
       [--country COUNTRY]
       [--url URL]         (repeatable, appends)
       [--birthday DATE]   (replaces existing)

mac-contacts update "Jane Doe" --phone "415-555-0199"
mac-contacts update "Jane Doe" --organization "New Corp" --city "Oakland"
mac-contacts update "Jane Doe" --birthday "1985-03-22"
mac-contacts update "Jane Doe" --url "https://jane.dev"

---

delete

Delete a contact. Prompts for confirmation unless --force is given.

delete NAME [--force]

mac-contacts delete "Jane Doe"           # prompts y/N
mac-contacts delete "Jane Doe" --force   # no prompt

---

add_to_list

Add a contact to a named list (CNGroup). Creates the list if it does not exist.

add_to_list NAME LIST

mac-contacts add_to_list "Jane Doe" "Work"

---

remove_from_list

Remove a contact from a named list.

remove_from_list NAME LIST

mac-contacts remove_from_list "Jane Doe" "Work"

Implementation note: Uses osascript (Contacts.app) because CNSaveRequest.removeMember_fromGroup_ silently no-ops for iCloud-backed groups.

---

list_groups

List all contact groups (lists) in the store.

list_groups

mac-contacts list_groups

---

Output conventions

• search, show, and list_groups emit YAML (requires pyyaml). search and list_groups return a YAML list; show returns a single YAML mapping. Parse with python3 -c "import sys,yaml; print(yaml.safe_load(sys.stdin))" or yq.
• Success messages begin with Success:.
• Error messages begin with Error: or [FATAL].
• search and list_groups exit with code 1 when no results are found.
• All other commands exit 1 on any failure.

Known limitations

• Notes (write): Setting a contact note requires the com.apple.developer.contacts.notes entitlement. create and update do not expose --note for this reason. Existing notes on contacts are readable via show.
• update replaces nothing: Phone, email, and address values are always appended, never replaced. To change a value, delete and recreate the contact, or edit via Contacts.app.
• show NAME matching: Uses CNContact.predicateForContactsMatchingName_ which matches substrings across name fields. If ambiguous, the first result is returned.