Structured insight that compounds

Jotaid is your note engine for Mac and iPhone, where every note builds connections, reveals themes, and deepens context for you and your AI.

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Free to start · Mac + iOS · No account needed

Jotaid markdown note app with backlinks and knowledge graph running on macOS and iOS

Where note systems stall

…and what Jotaid does at each point.

1Capture → Develop

Saved a lot, but little grew out of it?

Saving something feels like progress. But knowing where a note is isn't the same as knowing what's in it.

Everything lands in one Inbox — then it gets somewhere to go.

  • Capture without deciding where. A global hotkey on Mac, the iOS share sheet, the clipboard, PopClip or Raycast, even whole AI conversations — all go straight to the Inbox.

    PopClip extension ↗ Raycast extension ↗

  • Free Related notes find each other. Worked out on your device by default, and labelled by where the link came from: a concept you linked yourself, or closeness in meaning.

  • Cards on an infinite canvas. Drag fragments into themes, and the grouping sharpens as you move them.

  • Pro · AI Smart Theme does a first pass of affinity grouping; Smart Node picks out concepts worth naming; Theme Summary reads a theme and writes back insights, open questions and “how might we” prompts. You decide what stays.

Illustration: a small robot holding a “Save for later” card beside an overflowing Inbox box of paper notes

2Connect → Understand

You've linked everything. What has the graph told you?

A graph shows that things are connected. It rarely says which connections matter, or what they add up to.

Nodes are concepts, not whole notes — so there's something to compute.

  • Co-occurrence matrix. Which concepts keep appearing in the same notes, clustered into groups you never tagged by hand.

  • Roles, not just dots. Concepts that stand out are marked Core, Bridge or Emerging, and every link is scored by strength.

  • Trends. When a concept first appeared, when it grew, and when it went quiet.

  • Link predictions. Pairs you've never linked that the shape of your network says you might — worked out without AI, for free. With Pro, AI also proposes pairs you've never linked and reasons out why they might matter.

  • Pro · AI reading A few observations, one question worth sitting with, and a next step that names a real concept. It points; the meaning is yours.

The graph, matrix, trends and predictions are free. Having AI read them with you is Pro.

Illustration: a small robot looking up at a wall of pinned notes, linked by string around a central “Concept” card

3Understand → Use · macOS

You finally see it. Does your AI agent?

Every new conversation starts from zero. Paste your notes in, and it gets text — not the structure you've been building.

Let your agent read your concepts, not just chunks of text.

  • What it can read. Which notes mention a concept, and in what role — defining it, applying it, contrasting it; which concepts keep turning up together; when each first appeared and last came up.

  • Everything points back to a note. Each piece of evidence carries the note it came from, so you can check what your agent tells you.

  • Read-only, off until you turn it on, and it stays on your Mac. It listens only on this machine, reads every project unless you narrow it to the ones you choose, and a “Last used” line shows when an agent last read from it.

    How agent access works →

macOSPro

Illustration: a small robot handing cards labelled My notes, Ideas, Concepts, Questions and Insights to an AI agent on a laptop screen

*AI features require your own API key (BYOK). Compatible with OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, and OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Jotaid does not provide AI services.

AI thinks with you, never for you. It does the groundwork — surfacing concepts, structuring, connecting — but the judgment is yours.

Why it sticks this time

No plugins. No system to build.

Jotaid comes with the structure in place — pick the method you know and start writing.

Zettelkasten

Fleeting and literature notes default into the Inbox — turn any note into a Project and it becomes a permanent Zettelkasten slip-box.

Second Brain

Structure Projects however PARA calls for, and run CODE's full workflow — capture straight through to expression.

Design Thinking

Capture freely on an infinite canvas, then organize into Themes — the Double Diamond's diverge-then-converge process.

A native Markdown editor

Live highlighting, split preview, and three built-in themes — Light, Paper and Dark. Nothing to configure.

Bring your Markdown

.md files import into the Inbox for free, and your [[links]] come across as concepts. Notes live in Jotaid's own database and sync through iCloud; export to Markdown whenever you want.

Local-first by design

Your notes stay on your devices and sync via iCloud. You decide what AI can access; MCP is read-only and off by default.

*Creating Projects beyond the Inbox needs Pro: the permanent slip-box in Zettelkasten and the PARA structure in Second Brain. MCP agent access is part of Pro too. Everything else on these cards works in the free Inbox.

From jots to knowledge

Start free. Let every note add to what you know
All non-AI Inbox features are included: editor, backlinks, graph, matrix, canvas, and iCloud sync

macOS · Get Now iOS · Get Now

From the Blog

Why I Built Jotaid: Turning Saved Notes Into Connected Knowledge

Why I built Jotaid, a personal knowledge engine for Mac and iPhone: concept-linked notes, a co-occurrence matrix, themes, and read-only MCP for AI agents.

Stop Managing Notes. Start Developing Concepts.

Zettelkasten, backlinks and knowledge graphs promise connected thinking and rarely deliver. Why the unit worth building around is the concept, not the note.

Why Backlinks Are Not the Same as Relationships

A backlink records that two notes touched — never how, which way, how much, or since when. Why forty years of typed-link systems didn't fix that, and what does.
All posts →