Turning Calendar Data Into Daily Notes With cal-dump.py

Dump formatted ICS calendar events into daily note.

Im tracking a lot of things in my calendar, and I wanted to have them in my Obsidian notes too. cal-dump.py does that in one command: sync calendars, pull out events, format them, and write them into note files.

Script: GitLab: scripts/.local/bin/cal-dump.py · master · Fabian Untermoser / dot-file

Prerequisites

• vdirsyncer to sync calendar files to ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
• Python deps available: icalendar, recurring_ical_events, tabulate
• For --daily: NOTES_DIR points to your notes folder and is a clean git repo

How to use it

Basic Usage

# sync calendars, write to daily notes, from start date until today
cal-dump.py --sync --daily --from 2025-08-30 --to

Basic Usage

# dump single day to stdout
cal-dump.py 2025-09-04
cal-dump.py 2025-09-04 ~/.calendars/calendar.ics 
cal-dump.py 2025-09-04 --calendar-root ~/.calendars
 
# dump date range to stdout
cal-dump.py 2025-09-04 --days 10
cal-dump.py --from 2025-09-04 --to 2025-09-30
 
# format date to file
cal-dump.py 2025-09-04 -f 2025-09-04.md
 
# write to daily note 2025-09-04.md in ~/notes
cal-dump.py --daily 2025-09-04
cal-dump.py --daily 2025-09-04 --notes-dir ~/notes

Help

usage: cal-dump.py [-h] [--days DAYS | --to [END_DATE]] [--from START_DATE] [--sync]
                   [--calendar-root CALENDAR_ROOT] [--notes-dir NOTES_DIR] [-v] [-f FILE | --daily]
                   [DATE] [CALENDAR_FILES ...]
 
Dump ICS calendar events into daily note
 
positional arguments:
  DATE                  start date in yyyy-mm-dd format (required unless --from is used)
  CALENDAR_FILES        calendar files (defaults to /home/fabian/.calendars/*/*.ics)
 
options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --days DAYS           number of additional days to process (inclusive range)
  --to [END_DATE]       process DATE through END_DATE (inclusive); if END_DATE is omitted, uses today
  --from START_DATE     use START_DATE as start date (yyyy-mm-dd)
  --sync                run "vdirsyncer sync" before processing
  --calendar-root CALENDAR_ROOT
                        default source for calendars when CALENDAR_FILES are omitted (default:
                        /home/fabian/.calendars)
  --notes-dir NOTES_DIR
                        notes folder for --daily mode (default: /home/fabian/notes)
  -v, --verbose         Enable verbose mode
  -f, --file FILE       specific note file to write
  --daily               write to daily note
 
examples:
  cal-dump.py 2024-12-27 ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
  cal-dump.py --daily 2024-12-27 ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
  cal-dump.py --daily --days 31 2025-08-30 ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
  cal-dump.py --daily --from 2025-08-30 ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
  cal-dump.py --daily --from 2025-08-30 --to 2025-09-30 ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
  cal-dump.py --daily 2025-08-30 --to 2025-09-30 ~/.calendars/*/*.ics
  cal-dump.py --sync --daily --days 31 2025-08-30