@kleindberg I’m unsure of what is it that you are trying to achieve. Do you want to stop WooCommerce from adding order notes to your orders?
Throughout the order management process, there are certain notes that are added to the order. For example, when an order is paid by the customer, a note will be added saying:
Order status changed from Pending payment to Processing.
Are you trying to stop these notes from generating in the first place?
If so, I’m afraid there isn’t a way to do that from the settings of the plugin. As you mentioned, that would require custom coding.