# The CLI stopped working

> Fix a notate command that is refused, signed out, or cannot save its credentials.

Source: https://notate.md/docs/troubleshooting/cli-not-working/

Category: Troubleshooting

Updated: 2026-08-12

---

Most CLI problems are one of four things. What the command prints tells you which.

## "CLI access is turned off for this account"

CLI access is a setting on your account and it is off by default. Open Notate, go to **Settings, Features, CLI**, and switch on **Enable CLI access**.

It applies to every machine at once, so switching it off is a quick way to stop a script you are unsure about.

## A scheduled job silently stopped

Your CLI session lasts **seven days from its last use**, and each command resets the clock. A job that runs daily or weekly stays signed in indefinitely. One that runs monthly, or that paused for a fortnight, finds itself signed out.

Run `notate login` again to restore it. If the job runs less often than weekly, have it run something cheap like `notate whoami` on a schedule in between, so the session never lapses.

## "Not logged in" straight after logging in

Usually a machine with no desktop keychain, such as a server or a container. The CLI stores your credentials in the operating system keychain and falls back to a permission-restricted file when there is not one, but on some headless systems the keychain looks available and then fails.

Force the file store:

```bash
export NOTATE_CLI_STORE=file
notate login
```

The file is written with owner-only permissions. Set the variable for the job as well as for your own shell, or the job will not find the session you created.

## AI commands and search do not work

If your account has end-to-end encryption on, the server cannot read your notes, so anything that needs to read them on the server is unavailable: AI commands and search.

Everything else works normally. The CLI encrypts and decrypts on your own machine, so creating, reading, editing, and organizing notes are unaffected. See [end-to-end encryption](https://notate.md/docs/account/encryption/).

## Nothing runs at all

The CLI needs **Node.js 20 or newer**. Check with `node --version`, and reinstall with `npm install -g @notatemd/cli` if you upgraded Node since installing it.