Notes

Notes are for your own writing: reactions to what you read, reflections, things worth keeping. A note can stand on its own or be written on a card. Either way it's searchable like everything else, and what's related to it is beside you as you write.

Writing a note

On the Notes page, choose New note, or type in the quick-thought box and press Enter to save a line as a note. To write about something you caught, open its card and choose Write a note on this, or select a passage and choose Quote in note (see Cards).

Notes are written in Markdown, and the editor shows formatting as you type: headings, lists, quotes, links, tables and code. The paragraph you're in shows its Markdown marks so you can edit them; the rest looks finished. The usual shortcuts work, such as ⌘B for bold and ⌘I for italic.

Notes save as you type. At the top, the note says Saved, Saving…, or Not saved yet — it will retry when there's no connection. Focus hides everything but the note.

Type # and a word, such as #reading or #clients/acme, and it becomes a tag on the note when the note saves. To take that tag off, take the hashtag out of the text.

Mentioning or embedding a card

1. Type @ or [[ in a note.
2. Start typing the card's title, and choose it from the list.

This writes a link to the card, which looks like [Lease.pdf](card:…) in Markdown. Click it to open the card. An image is embedded instead, so it shows in the note.

Paste or drop a link, an image or a file into a note and Caute saves it as a card of its own, then mentions it in the note. A pasted screenshot is read and made searchable like any other image.

Every mention also shows on the card's Links tab, under Mentioned in.

Related as you write

Beside the note, the Related tab shows cards close to the paragraph you're writing, and updates as you type. Choose Link to link one to the note. Links lists what the note is linked to, and Info says who can read it, how many words it has, and when it was last edited.

Versions

Choose Version history from the note's ··· menu. Each earlier version shows when it was saved, how many words it had and who wrote it: you, someone else, or an agent. Restore brings one back.

When two edits collide

In a shared space, the note says when someone else is editing it at the same time. If you both change it anyway, Caute never throws either version away. When the changes are to different parts, they're combined and the note says Merged with someone else's edit. When you both changed the same part, your text stays in the editor, unchanged, and a banner shows theirs so you can take anything you want from it. Choose I've dealt with it to close the banner.

Who can read a note

A note is as private as the space it's in, and the note shows which space that is. A note written on a card in a shared space starts in your own inbox. To share it, choose Move it or Move to another space. Caute asks first, and warns you if the note mentions cards that people in that space can't open.

Notes on iPhone

On the iPhone app, notes are kept on the phone as well, so you can read, write and search them with no signal. What you write is saved on the phone first and sent to Caute when there's a connection. If the same note changed somewhere else meanwhile, the same rules apply: nothing you wrote is lost. See iPhone and Mac.

Notes written by an assistant

A connected assistant can write notes for you and add to existing ones, if you gave it that permission. It can change what's already written only with a separate permission, and Caute saves the earlier version first. A note an assistant wrote because you asked it to says so in Timeline, for example "Written by Claude", with what you asked in quotation marks. When an assistant last wrote a note, its Info tab says "by an agent", and its versions say which ones an agent wrote. What assistants remember about you, and the checkpoints they save for a task, are notes too, kept on the Memory page and not in Notes. See Assistants and Memory.

Exporting notes

To take one note with you, choose Export as Markdown from its ··· menu. You get a .md file you can open in any text editor. Copy as Markdown quote copies it for pasting elsewhere.

To export everything, including every note as Markdown, go to Settings → Export or delete and choose Export everything. See Privacy and your data.

Deleting a note

Choose Delete note… from the ··· menu. Its versions go too.