Marc von Holzen

Let Your Agent Organize Your Workflowy Inbox

February 10, 2026

Github github.com/mholzen/workflowy-triage

Video Walkthrough

The Problem

If you’re like me, you add a lot of things to your inbox with the intent of coming back later to file them. While I think it’s critically important to re-read notes and decide whether they’re worth keeping, that task can be daunting when the inbox grows.

So I wrote a skill to help.

What It Does

This skill instructs your agent to triage nodes by proposing a location based on rules you define. It analyzes each item, suggests where it should go, and explains its reasoning.

For each node in your list, it creates a proposal structure:

[inbox]
├── [node name](id) -> [target name]
│   ├── [original node]
│   ├── target: [link to proposed location]
│   ├── reason: [why this location fits]
│   └── alternative targets: [other options]

You then review each proposal, move the node to the target (or choose a better location), and clean up the scaffolding.

Why an Agent Works Well Here

Two things make this approach interesting:

Semantic understanding. The agent uses its understanding of the world to interpret your notes. A cryptic “science of achievement vs art of fulfillment” gets matched to your philosophical reflection category, not your TODO list. The agent reads meaning, not just keywords.

Learning from your choices. At the end of the process, you can instruct the agent to review your decisions and update its rules. If you consistently move meeting notes to “grow understanding” instead of “relationships,” the agent notices and proposes a rule update.

The Workflow

Phase 1: Propose Locations

Run the skill on your inbox:

/workflowy-triage inbox [rules-node-id]

The rules node is optional. If you don’t provide one, Claude searches your workspace for a node named “rules for triage” and uses that.

Claude reads your triage rules, analyzes each node, and creates proposal structures with primary and alternative suggestions.

Phase 2: Review

For each proposal:

  1. Click the target link to preview the destination
  2. Accept the suggestion or choose an alternative
  3. Move the original node to your chosen location
  4. Delete the proposal scaffolding

Phase 3: Learn

After you’ve made your choices:

/workflowy-triage inbox --review

Claude examines which suggestions you accepted versus rejected, identifies patterns, and proposes rule updates.

Defining Your Rules

Create a node called “rules for triage” with simple pattern-to-location mappings:

rules for triage
├── find the deepest most applicable node under synthesize
├── before finalizing a location, always call workflowy_get on it to see its children
│   └── only stop when the node is a leaf or no children match the item's content

The agent matches items against these patterns and proposes locations accordingly.

Taking It Further

While I think reviewing notes is a crucial step for integrating knowledge, this skill is easily extended. A future pass could move nodes to their target locations automatically, turning this from a review tool into a fully automated filing system.

Installation

This skill requires the Workflowy MCP server to be configured in Claude Code first.

Then install the skill:

npx workflowy-triage

This copies the skill files into ~/.claude/skills/workflowy-triage/.

Usage:

/workflowy-triage <node-id> [rules-node-id]

See the full documentation for details.