friends VS khard

This is maybe slightly different than what you’re looking for, but my project Friends[1] is a journaling CLI that I also use to keep track of people’s addresses and contact info (via the “notes” feature).

[1] https://github.com/JacobEvelyn/friends

For those not into Emacs: Khard is a nice address book for the Unix console https://github.com/lucc/khard

I still use carddav to backup the contacts on my phone, but mu4e will autocomplete the address of any contact you ever had an email exchange with, so you will have access immediately to next to your full contact list anyway. You can still use khard and vdirsyncer if you ever find yourself needing a contact from your phone.

Another comment already mentioned Khard, which has been around a while. [0]

There's also Mates [1]. Less mature, very simple, but it's what I personally use.

I try to steer away from relying on CLI tools implemented in python or ruby: at the system level they always seem to cause dependency hell problems eventually. Mates is implemented in Rust, so it's compiled, which is primarily why I chose it.

An important related project is vdirsyncer [2]. Ppl, khard, and mates all store data in vcard format but don't talk to APIs or sync anything. Vdirsyncer can sync your vcard collection with your email provider or what have you.

[0] https://github.com/scheibler/khard