Request to debug a macro

Questions & Suggestions
1

I'm a non-coding fool working with Claude AI trying to do the following. I would appreciate human help.

Save NotebookLM collections to output.kmmacros (6.5 KB)

I'm trying to create a macro that:

  1. Prompts for Category, Type, and Title
  2. Gets clipboard content
  3. Creates a markdown file with YAML metadata
  4. Saves to: /Users/ellenmadono/_Documents_local/NoteBookLM Collections/markdown/

The macro runs, all prompts work, but no file appears in the folder. Claude was able to find several errors in syntax such as capitalization. I should be able to find the file in a computer folder located in my documents_local. The file is supposed to go to DEVONthink in the folder that is designated. Somehow I don't think the macro is capable of doing that. If I can just get the file into documents_local, that would be enough.

I've attached the macro. Can someone help me find what's wrong?

2

I'm not sure if I'm right, but I think I see a newline character in this action:

image
image1062×280 80.7 KB

... and I think that would be a mistake, because filenames don't usually contain newline characters.

If you check the Engine.log file, you might see an error message that would also suggest this is the problem.

3

Thank you Airy. I will look for it. Also, the problem of losing track of the process with AI is big for a non-coder fool. I am going to work on this more and see if I cannot be clearer in my thinking. I am just lost following Claude. I need to be in charge. So, please others don’t spend time on this.

4

I'm happy to help. In fact, I check this site dozen(s) of times per day to see if I can help someone. But sometimes I can't help as much as I'd like because I don't own the same software as the person asking for help, or maybe the same version of macOS, or maybe the same version of KM. So I just do the best I can, and sometimes it's a back and forth process. In some cases it takes several questions and answers before the final answer comes to light.

5

You can combine your prompts into one, to make life a it easier (and the macro shorter when editing!):

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image688×372 41.9 KB

But the next action is worrying -- you reference the Global variable varName but it hasn't been set in the macro so could contain nothing, or could be something that breaks a file name:

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image519×157 20.1 KB

The value is particular to your machine -- for me it's "Hello World!" -- so not something we can troubleshoot. I'm guessing it shouldn't actually be there at all.

@Airy's already pointed out the line break in CollectionFilePath. But you've also missed out a "Collection" in the variable name -- I'm guessing the path should be

/Users/ellenmadono/_Documents_local/NoteBookLMCollections/markdown/%Variable%CollectionFileName%

In the "Set Variable: FileContent" action you use %Variable%ClipboardContent% -- that variable hasn't been set in this macro. Perhaps you meant to use the %SystemClipboard% token to insert the current clipboard contents?

The next action you do use the %SystemClipboard%, but you save it to a variable that you don't use later.

The final "Write Text" action is fine, except the file path will be broken by the previously mentioned "Set Variable CollectionFilepath`" action.

Putting that all together, along with some best guesses:

Save NotebookLM collections to output v2.kmmacros (5.0 KB)

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Save NotebookLM collections to output v2.kmmacros
Save NotebookLM collections to output v2.kmmacros1070×3408 244 KB

If that gets anywhere close to what you want then let us know what tweaks are needed.

Claude isn't very good at this (yet). So please do post if you have any questions, get stuck on another macro, or just want to ask random things about KM.