Apple Reminders: Full Terminal Control of macOS Reminders via remindctl

12,500+ downloads and 21 stars — the Apple Reminders Skill by @steipete brings macOS's native Reminders app to your terminal and Clawdbot workflow. Built on remindctl — a CLI tool steipete wrote specifically for this purpose — the skill lets you manage reminders without ever touching the Reminders UI.

Fun fact: Steipete is also the author of the openai-whisper local transcription skill — two of ClawHub's top 10 skills from the same developer.

The Problem It Solves

Apple Reminders is deeply integrated with the Apple ecosystem — iCloud sync, Siri, Shortcuts, Handoff. But it has no official CLI. For developers and power users who live in the terminal, this means constant context switching to a GUI app for basic task management. The Apple Reminders Skill fixes this by wrapping remindctl — a purpose-built binary that reads from and writes to the macOS Reminders database directly.

Installation

Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.

# Install remindctl via Homebrew (macOS only)
brew install steipete/tap/remindctl
 
# Or build from source (requires Swift 6.2+)
pnpm install && pnpm build
# Binary available at ./bin/remindctl
 
# Grant Reminders permission when macOS prompts
remindctl authorize
 
# Verify access
remindctl status

Note: remindctl is written in Swift and integrates directly with macOS's EventKit framework — the same API used by Calendar.app and Reminders.app. This is not AppleScript or screen scraping; it's a first-party API integration, which makes it fast and reliable.

Viewing Reminders

Time-Based Views

remindctl               # Default: today's reminders
remindctl today         # Today
remindctl tomorrow      # Tomorrow
remindctl week          # This week
remindctl overdue       # Past due, incomplete
remindctl upcoming      # Future items
remindctl completed     # Completed reminders
remindctl all           # Everything
remindctl 2026-03-20   # Specific date

List-Based Views

remindctl list          # All reminder lists
remindctl list Work     # Reminders in "Work" list

Managing Reminders

Create

# Quick add (goes to default list)
remindctl add "Buy milk"
 
# Specific list + due date
remindctl add --title "Call mom" --list Personal --due tomorrow
 
# With exact date/time
remindctl add --title "Team standup" --list Work --due "2026-03-16 09:00"

Edit

# Edit by ID (from list output)
remindctl edit 1 --title "New title" --due 2026-04-01
 
# Edit due date only
remindctl edit 3 --due "next Monday"

Complete and Delete

# Complete one or multiple reminders by ID
remindctl complete 1 2 3
 
# Delete (requires --force to confirm)
remindctl delete 4A83 --force

Manage Lists

remindctl list Projects --create     # Create new list
remindctl list Work --rename Office  # Rename list
remindctl list Work --delete         # Delete list

Output Formats

# Default (human-readable)
remindctl today
 
# JSON (for scripting and integrations)
remindctl today --format json
 
# TSV (for spreadsheet import)
remindctl week --format tsv

The JSON output is particularly useful for piping into other tools or scripts.

With Clawdbot

Once installed, you can ask Clawdbot:

Show me my reminders for today
Add a reminder to review the PR tomorrow at 3 PM
What's overdue in my Work list?
Mark reminder 1 as complete
Create a new list called "Shopping"
What do I have coming up this week?

Use Cases

Developer workflow: Add task reminders while coding without leaving the terminal. remindctl add "Deploy to staging" --due 5pm --list Work keeps work items in the proper Apple ecosystem (synced to iPhone, watchOS, Siri).

Remote/SSH access: Manage reminders on a macOS machine over SSH, where GUI access isn't available.

Scripting: Use JSON output to build custom dashboards, weekly review scripts, or integrations with other tools.

Morning briefing: Combine with Clawdbot's cron or daily routine to get a spoken summary of the day's reminders.

Comparison to Alternatives

Considerations

• macOS only — remindctl is a macOS binary; the skill doesn't work on Linux or Windows
• Permission required — macOS will prompt for Reminders access on first use; this is a one-time authorization
• No API key needed — reads directly from the local Reminders database via EventKit
• iCloud sync delay — changes made via CLI sync to iCloud (and your iPhone) but may take a moment to propagate
• ID-based editing — editing and completing reminders requires the ID from remindctl list output; Clawdbot handles this lookup automatically

The Bigger Picture

The Apple Reminders Skill is a clean example of the "AI as terminal glue" pattern: taking a GUI-only app that has no CLI, writing a proper native tool (remindctl), and then wrapping that in an AI skill for natural language access. The result is Apple Reminders working seamlessly in developer workflows — all the iCloud sync and Apple ecosystem integration, none of the GUI friction.

View the skill on ClawHub: apple-reminders