--- name: onenote-hello-world description: 'Create your first OneNote notebook, section, and page with correct XHTML content. Use when starting a new OneNote integration or testing Graph API connectivity. Trigger with "onenote hello world", "first onenote page", "create onenote notebook". ' allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit, Bash(npm:*), Bash(pip:*), Grep version: 1.0.0 license: MIT author: Jeremy Longshore tags: - saas - onenote - microsoft compatibility: Designed for Claude Code --- # OneNote Hello World ## Overview Create your first OneNote notebook, section, and page through the Graph API. The critical pitfall this skill addresses: OneNote pages require strict XHTML (not regular HTML). Missing closing tags, unsupported attributes, or table features like `rowspan`/`colspan` cause silent content corruption where the API returns 200 OK but the page renders incorrectly or with missing content. This skill walks through the full creation chain — notebook, section, page — with correct XHTML, then reads back the content to demonstrate that output HTML differs from input HTML. ## Prerequisites - Completed `onenote-install-auth` — you have a working `GraphServiceClient` (Python) or `Client` (TypeScript) - Azure AD app with `Notes.ReadWrite` permission scope - Node.js 18+ or Python 3.10+ ## Instructions ### Step 1: Create a Notebook ```typescript // TypeScript — create a new notebook const notebook = await client.api("/me/onenote/notebooks").post({ displayName: "Dev Integration Test" }); console.log(`Notebook created: ${notebook.displayName} (${notebook.id})`); // Save notebook.id — you need it for creating sections ``` ```python # Python — create a new notebook from msgraph.generated.models.notebook import Notebook request_body = Notebook(display_name="Dev Integration Test") notebook = await client.me.onenote.notebooks.post(request_body) print(f"Notebook created: {notebook.display_name} ({notebook.id})") ``` **Naming rules:** Notebook names must be unique per user. If a notebook with the same name exists, you get a 400 error with code `20117`. Use a timestamp suffix for test notebooks: `f"Test-{datetime.now().isoformat()}"`. ### Step 2: Create a Section ```typescript // TypeScript — create a section inside the notebook const section = await client .api(`/me/onenote/notebooks/${notebook.id}/sections`) .post({ displayName: "Getting Started" }); console.log(`Section created: ${section.displayName} (${section.id})`); ``` ```python # Python — create a section from msgraph.generated.models.onenote_section import OnenoteSection section_body = OnenoteSection(display_name="Getting Started") section = await client.me.onenote.notebooks.by_notebook_id( notebook.id ).sections.post(section_body) print(f"Section created: {section.display_name} ({section.id})") ``` ### Step 3: Create a Page with Correct XHTML This is where most integrations break. OneNote requires XHTML — every tag must close, the document must be UTF-8, and several HTML features are silently dropped. **VALID XHTML (this works):** ```html Sprint Planning — March 2026

Sprint Planning Notes

Attendees: Alice, Bob, Charlie

Action Items

Deploy feature X by Friday
Review PR #488
Set up CI pipeline

Decisions

Approved migration to delegated auth. Deadline: April 15.

Task	Owner	Status
Auth migration	Alice	In progress

Next meeting: March 30, 2026

``` **INVALID HTML (common mistakes that cause silent failures):** ```html

Line one
Line two

Merged cell Row 1 Chart

Content

``` **Send the page:** ```typescript // TypeScript — create page with XHTML content const xhtml = ` Hello from Graph API

Hello World

Created via Microsoft Graph API at ${new Date().toISOString()}

First task
Second task

`; const page = await client .api(`/me/onenote/sections/${section.id}/pages`) .header("Content-Type", "text/html") .post(xhtml); console.log(`Page created: ${page.title} (${page.id})`); ``` ```python # Python — create page via raw HTTP (SDK page creation uses HTML body) import httpx headers = { "Authorization": f"Bearer {token}", "Content-Type": "text/html", } xhtml = """ Hello from Graph API

Hello World

Created via Microsoft Graph API

First task

""" resp = httpx.post( f"https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/onenote/sections/{section.id}/pages", headers=headers, content=xhtml, ) resp.raise_for_status() page = resp.json() print(f"Page created: {page['title']} ({page['id']})") ``` ### Step 4: Read Back Page Content The HTML you get back from `GET /pages/{id}/content` is NOT the same as what you sent. Graph normalizes the HTML, adds `data-id` attributes, wraps content in `div` elements, and may reorder attributes. ```typescript // TypeScript — read page content back // Note: small delay needed — page indexing is async await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, 2000)); const content = await client .api(`/me/onenote/pages/${page.id}/content`) .get(); // content is an HTML string — not the same as what you sent // Graph adds: data-id attributes, absolute positioning, div wrappers console.log("Page HTML (first 500 chars):", content.substring(0, 500)); ``` ```python # Python — read page content import asyncio await asyncio.sleep(2) # Page indexing is async resp = httpx.get( f"https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/onenote/pages/{page['id']}/content", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}"}, ) print("Output HTML (first 500 chars):", resp.text[:500]) # Notice: output HTML has data-id attrs, absolute positions, normalized structure ``` ### Valid data-tag Values for Checklists | data-tag value | Renders as | |---------------|------------| | `to-do` | Unchecked checkbox | | `to-do:completed` | Checked checkbox | | `important` | Star icon | | `question` | Question mark icon | | `critical` | Red exclamation | | `remember-for-later` | Bookmark icon | | `definition` | Definition marker | | `highlight` | Yellow highlight | ## Output After completing these steps you will have: - A new OneNote notebook with a section and page - A page with correctly formatted XHTML content including checklists - Understanding of input vs output HTML differences - Knowledge of XHTML rules that prevent silent content corruption ## Error Handling | Error | Code | Root Cause | Solution | |-------|------|------------|----------| | Duplicate notebook name | 400 (`20117`) | Notebook with same `displayName` exists | Append timestamp or check existence first | | Invalid HTML | 400 | Malformed XHTML — unclosed tags, bad encoding | Validate XHTML before sending; use XML parser | | Section not found | 404 | Notebook ID or section ID is wrong | Re-fetch notebook, verify ID matches | | Empty page content | 200 (empty body) | Page created but content >4MB | Check payload size before POST | | Missing title | 400 | `` tag missing from `<head>` | Always include `<head><title>...` | | Content encoding error | 400 | Non-UTF-8 characters in HTML | Ensure UTF-8 encoding, strip BOM markers | ## Examples **Minimal valid page (smallest possible):** ```html Minimal Page

Content here

``` **Page with image from URL:** ```html Page with Image

Architecture Diagram

Figure 1: Current system architecture

``` ## Resources - [OneNote Create Pages](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/onenote-create-page) - [Input/Output HTML Reference](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/onenote-input-output-html) - [Note Tags Reference](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/onenote-note-tags) - [Images and Files in OneNote](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/onenote-images-files) - [Graph Explorer](https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer) - [OneNote API Overview](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/api/resources/onenote-api-overview) ## Next Steps - Use `onenote-sdk-patterns` to add retry logic and rate limit handling - See `onenote-common-errors` when page creation returns unexpected errors - See `onenote-local-dev-loop` to set up mock responses for rapid iteration