Cinnamon Applet Inbox

Backend API endpoint for the Trilium API Cinnamon panel applet. Surfaces the first line of a designated "inbox" note so it can be shown in the Cinnamon panel and clicked to jump straight to it. If that first line contains a duration token (e.g. 30m, 2h), it also acts as a countdown timer: the token is stripped from the displayed text, a desktop notification fires when the timer (re)starts, and the panel flashes/shows a countdown until it expires.

Setup

After installing, open the addon's root note (cinnamon-applet-inbox@beatlink) in Trilium — it renders a Settings screen with the following fields:

Settings are saved to a persisted note (see TAM's Persistence mechanism) — your edits survive addon updates. The screen and the underlying schema-driven storage are provided by libsettings@beatlink.

Then, in the Cinnamon panel applet's settings: - Set the API endpoint to inboxPanel (must match the customRequestHandler label on cinnamon-applet-inbox.js) - Set the API key to the same random string as the apiKey field - Set the fetch action to get_inbox - Set the click action to open_inbox

How it works

On each poll, the endpoint reads the note identified by inboxNoteId and strips it down to its first line of text. If that line contains a duration token (any combination of \d+ms, \d+s, \d+m, \d+h, \d+d, e.g. "Take out trash 30m"), the token is parsed into a total duration, removed from the displayed text, and a countdown timer starts:

• No timespan found — the panel flashes solid blue to prompt you to add one.
• New or changed text with a timespan — a desktop notification fires once, and the timer (re)starts from now.
• Timer running — the panel shows the remaining time as a suffix ([00:04:32]) with a slow blink.
• Timer expired — the panel flashes solid red.
• Empty inbox — the reminder is disabled and any saved timer state is cleared.

Clicking the panel item calls back into the endpoint with open_inbox, which activates the inbox note in Trilium. The desktop notification itself is sent via libnotification@beatlink's backend export, which handles the frontend hop (the Notification API only exists there) internally.

Known limitations

• The in-progress timer state (text/start_time) is stored as plain labels directly on the cinnamon-applet-inbox.js note, not through libsettings' persisted config — it's derived, per-poll bookkeeping rather than user configuration, so it's rebuilt automatically from the inbox note's current content rather than needing to survive verbatim. One consequence: since TAM deletes and recreates an addon's whole note tree on update, a running timer resets after you update this addon — harmless, it just re-arms itself on the next poll.
• The reminder_time/reminder_delay/reminder_color/prefix_string blink parameters used to drive the panel's flashing are fixed, not configurable.