01 · Capture
Get it out of your head
Type it, or press the mic and talk. Save it untitled and half-formed, that's the point.
Think out loud.
Your library files itself.
Brainstash is a local-first AI notes app. Capture by typing or by voice, every note flows into a personal markdown library that an agent files, dedupes and links, so you can ask questions across your whole history and get an answer.
SQLite on your own machine. Plain markdown you own. Zero cloud by default.
Type or dictate
Notes title themselves
Markdown you own
Works offline
How it works
Capture → library → agent → recall
Four moves. You only ever do the first one.
02 · Library
It becomes a real file
Every note is written out as markdown into a personal library on your disk, one page per thought, readable anywhere.
03 · Agent
An agent does the filing
It sorts each page where it belongs, folds duplicates together, fixes what went stale, and links it to what you already knew.
04 · Recall
Ask, don't dig
Ask a question in plain language and the answer comes back out of the whole library, not just the note in front of you.
What it does
A notes app that keeps up with you
Most notes apps are a folder you feel guilty about. This one does the boring half.
Capture at the speed of thought
Type it, or hold the mic and talk, dictation streams straight into the note and saves as you go, so a thought in the car doesn't have to survive the drive home.
Notes you never bothered to title get a title and tags a couple of seconds after you save. ⌘N to start, ⌘K to find, and you're back to what you were doing.
A library that files itself
Notes don't rot in a database you can't open. Each one is written out as markdown into your own library, one page per project, person, idea or concept.
An agent works that library on a schedule: filing new pages, merging what's redundant, correcting what's out of date, and wiring related pages together with [[wikilinks]].
Ask across everything you've written
Search finds the note. Asking finds the answer. Questions run against your notes and the whole library standing behind them, so “what did I decide about that?” finally has somewhere to land.
Years of half-finished thinking turn into something you can actually query.
Reachable from your phone
Send a thought from wherever you are and it lands in the library like anything else, titled, filed, linked to what it relates to.
Ask a question the same way and the answer comes back to you. Say “remind me to…” and it turns into a real reminder on your phone.
See the shape of what you know
Browse the library page by page, or open the graph, a force-directed map of the whole thing. Every page is an orb, every link an edge, colored by what kind of page it is and sized by how connected it's become. Drag it around, hover to light up a neighborhood, click through to read.
Projects
People
Ideas
Concepts
Notes
From anywhere
Your brain, on the other end of a message
The thought you have walking to the car is the one you lose. Send it from your phone and it goes through the same machinery as everything else, captured, titled, filed, linked. Ask it something and it answers from the library.
Youthe tour page should probably open with the graph, not the text
BrainstashSaved, filed under projects/brainstash, titled “Tour page should open on the graph.”
Youwhat did I decide about keeping notes on my own machine?
BrainstashLocal only, no accounts: SQLite on the Mac, markdown in the library, cloud strictly opt-in. You wrote it down three times across a year, most recently in connect-everything.
Local-first
Zero cloud by default
Nobody needs another company holding their thinking. Brainstash runs on your machine and writes to your disk.
On your machine
Notes live in a SQLite file on your own disk. No account to create, nothing syncing in the background, nothing to cancel later.
Files you own
The library is plain markdown in a folder you can open in any editor, put in git, back up, or walk away with entirely.
Offline by default
Capturing, searching and browsing need no connection at all. Only the AI features reach out, and only at the moment you use one.