The AI notebook for makers.
Make something of what you learn.
Write down what you're learning, and Graphite files it into your folders and projects. The Guide asks what you haven't worked out yet, checks you can explain it, and arranges a draft from your own sentences — then you publish it, script it for a video, or teach it back. Plain files you keep, and the AI you choose.
The notebook and the Guide work today with your own AI key. A plan — $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month, after 30 days free with no card — is coming. Your notes never lock. In beta, in your browser and on the Mac. Mac app: Apple silicon · macOS 13 or later. Your notes stay in this browser on this device. Export a copy to keep them; they don’t sync with your Mac.
How it works
Write it down. Work it out. Make something of it.
Here it is in the welcome notebook a new notebook opens with: an article to write about attention, the rough notes for it, the Guide beside each, to ask about it, and the Graphite button in the corner, to change it. Each step is drawn the way the app draws it, from that notebook’s own files.
01Write it down · You, and the Guide once you turn filing on
Everything starts in the Inbox.
Choose New note on the Graphite button's card and write: nothing asks what a note is, and nothing is sent. Paste or drop text, a photo or a PDF anywhere outside a note's text, and it waits in the Inbox. Every note in no project or folder is in the Inbox, one line each; open one where it is, and move it into a project or a folder when you know where it goes — drag it onto one in the sidebar — or leave it. Turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI, and Graphite files the rest into the project or folder each clearly belongs to, with a line in the Logbook and Undo. It never changes your words, never deletes, and never moves a file you put somewhere yourself, except a photo or a PDF in the Inbox, which moves once, when it's filed as a receipt, and Undo puts it back.
Inbox
6 notes · drag a note onto a folder to file it
New note⌥⇧⌘N- Ask Sam to read the draftToday
- Similar meanings sit close together#transformers #machine-learningOct 7
- Attention is a weighted average#transformers #machine-learningOct 6
- How does a model know when to stop writingOct 5
- Welcome to GraphiteOct 4
Everything that changed is in theLogbook
02Work it out · You, and the Guide when you ask
Find what you haven't worked out yet.
Ask the Guide, beside the note, about the note you're in — or select a sentence, choose Ask Graphite and type your question, and the Guide answers about those words. Ask what a line means or for an example, and the Guide answers from that note and the notes it links to, then asks you one question back; every question and its answer stay in the Guide's conversation, beside the note, the earlier ones folded to a line. What's missing lists the questions a curious reader would ask that your notes don't answer yet, each one sitting's work, for you to answer in your own words. Teach it back with the note closed, to a curious student who asks why, and each gap it finds goes under What's missing too.
GuideThis noteWhat's missingExplain simplyResearchTeach it backQuiz meCheck itLink relatedWhere would a reader get lost?
At the scores. Attention reads the whole sentence at once says “it” looks hardest at “cat”, but nothing in your notes says how a word decides where to look — and that's where you stalled in Teaching — Why does attention matter.
Why long inputs cost so much is clear on what long inputs cost, so the second half holds up.
What could you show a reader to make the scores concrete?
Add to noteNew note from thisAsk about this note…Sends this project and its 4 notes when you ask.
03Make something of it · You; the Guide arranges only when you ask
A first draft in your own words.
Choose An outline or A draft in Actions, and the Guide arranges your own sentences in the order that explains it best, with what's missing marked where it belongs. Anything it can't find in your notes, it leaves out, and says so. A draft you keep is a new note of its own, labelled as Graphite's arranging; you write the rest. Click the Graphite button to change a note — summarize it, format it, or shorten the words you've selected — and it shows the changes it suggests in the note, change by change, for you to accept or reject. Then publish it as one web page you own, set it out as a script for a video, or copy it as Markdown for a blog or a newsletter.
Draft — Why does attention matter
Arranged by Graphite from your notes: every sentence is yours; the headings and what's missing are Graphite's.
Reading the whole sentence
Formatting, change 1 of 2Before transformers, models read a sentence one word at a time and had to carry everything forward. Attention lets every word look at every other word at once. In "The cat sat on the mat because it was tired", the word "it" looks hardest at "cat". That's how the model works out what "it" means.
Accept RejectMissing: How does the model know which word to look at hardest?
What it costs
Formatting, change 2 of 2Every word is compared with every other word, so doubling the input makes four times the comparisons. That's why long documents are slow and expensive to run.
Accept Reject
Your voice
An editor, not a ghostwriter.
A chatbot writes for you. The Guide works on what you wrote: it asks what's missing, checks you can explain it, arranges a draft from your own sentences, and suggests edits you accept or reject. Anything it can't find in your notes, it leaves out — or asks you for.
Work it out
- What's missingThe questions between these notes and something you could publish.
- Teach it backExplain it with your notes closed, to a curious student. What you can't explain yet goes in What's missing.
Make it
- An outlineYour sentences, in an order that explains it.
- A draftYour own sentences, arranged, with the gaps marked. No sentence added.
- A script for a videoScenes: what to say and what to show.
Share it
- Publish a pageOne web page you own, saved as a file.
- Copy as MarkdownFor a blog or a newsletter.
What's missing, an outline, a draft and Teach it back are the Guide's. Publishing a page, Copy as Markdown and the plain version of a script for a video — a scene for each part of the note — need no key.
Where would a reader get lost?
At the scores. Attention reads the whole sentence at once says “it” looks hardest at “cat”, but nothing in your notes says how a word decides where to look — and that's where you stalled in Teaching — Why does attention matter.Research
- Attention was first used to translate between languages in 2014, three years before the transformer made it the whole model.
- Its cost grows with the square of the input's length: twice the words, four times the work.
- Each word's new meaning is a weighted average of the words it attends to.
Check: the dates, in the papers that introduced each — Bahdanau, Cho and Bengio (2014), and Vaswani and others (2017).
Sends this note and the notes it links to when you ask.
Publish “Attention is a weighted average” as a web page
It’s a file you own. Put it on any website — Graphite doesn’t host it.
Attention is a weighted average
transformers · machine-learning
Every token's new meaning is a weighted average of all the tokens' value vectors, and the weights come from how well its query matches each key. The weights aren't learned: the matrices that make the queries, keys and values are.
Grew from Attention
Folders and projects
You choose the folders. Graphite files into them.
A folder is for something you keep learning about — Bitcoin, AI, design. You never finish one. A project is something you're making from what you learn — an article, a video, a talk. It starts as a question and ends when you've made it. Make your own from the + beside Folders in the sidebar — New folder or New project — and each is a note of its own. A folder opens in the sidebar onto its projects and notes, and a project’s page gathers the notes in it, what’s missing from them, and a line of what Graphite notices — how many notes, how many questions are open, when you last taught it back, when a draft was started. Nothing asks you to fill in a status.
A project holds what you're making; links hold what you know. A note is in one project at a time, and links to as many notes as it likes.
Filing isn't learning, so you shouldn't have to do it. In a study of how people find their email again, the ones who filed it carefully spent time doing it and were no more successful at finding things (Whittaker et al., 2011). So once you turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI, Graphite files your Inbox into the project or folder each note clearly belongs to, writes each act in the Logbook, with Undo, and never changes your words.
- How do transformers work?
- Why does some learning stick?
- Machine learning
- Why does attention matter
Why does attention matter
4 notes · 2 questions open · taught back Oct 25 · draft started Oct 25
An article for people who use chatbots every day but have never read the paper: what attention does, in plain words, and why it makes long inputs expensive. It's done when it's published.
What's missing
- How does the model know which word to look at hardest?
- Does the model understand the sentence, or does it only match words?
- What did models do before attention?
Notes in this project
- Attention reads the whole sentence at onceToday
- Draft — Why does attention matterToday
- Teaching — Why does attention matterToday
- Why long inputs cost so muchToday
Logbook
What you and Graphite changed, newest first. Undo puts it back as it was. Kept for 90 days.
Today
Filed “Everyone gets the tired cat at once” in “Why does attention matter”. It’s about how the article opens.
6:14 PMUndoRead a receipt: Corner Café, 14.50 USD on 3 Oct, filed in Receipts/2026.
6:13 PMUndoMoved “Open the article with the tired cat” to “Why does attention matter”.
5:52 PMUndoFriday
Filed “Tokens are pieces of words, not words” in “Machine learning”. It’s about machine learning, and none of your projects is.
9:05 AMUndoPrinciples
Why it’s built this way.
Three things Graphite holds to, each said only as far as the research behind it goes.
Your words stay yours.
Graphite changes nothing you write unless you accept the change, and marks what it writes as its own. When it drafts, it arranges your sentences: it doesn't write new ones.
An outline or a draft the Guide arranges is made of sentences from your notes, word for word, in the order that explains it, with what's missing marked as a question. Any sentence it can't find in your notes is taken out before you see it, and the app says how many. An edit it suggests — formatting a note, or what you asked of a selection — shows in the note, change by change, and nothing is written until you accept it. What you keep is marked as Graphite's and is a line in the Logbook, with Undo; a typed question gets an answer and one question back.
Students given plain chatbot answers did better in practice and worse on the exam. A tutor with guardrails largely avoided the harm. Bastani et al., 2025
GuideThis noteWhat's missingExplain simplyResearchTeach it backQuiz meCheck itLink relatedDraft it
Reading the whole sentence
Before transformers, models read a sentence one word at a time and had to carry everything forward. Attention lets every word look at every other word at once. In "The cat sat on the mat because it was tired", the word "it" looks hardest at "cat". That's how the model works out what "it" means.
Missing: How does the model know which word to look at hardest?
Graphite left out one sentence that wasn't in your notes.
Save as a draftAsk about this note…Sends this project and its 4 notes when you ask.
The best way to learn is to teach.
Explain it to someone who asks why, with your notes closed, and you'll find what you don't understand yet.
It's an old saying — Seneca wrote that people learn while they teach — and the research behind it is narrower, and useful: explaining from memory, to someone who asks questions, shows you the gaps. So Teach it back puts the note out of sight while Graphite plays a curious student who asks why, asks for an example and asks what your words mean. Afterwards it marks what you said against your own notes, never with a score, and each gap goes under What's missing in the note.
Across 28 studies, preparing to teach, and then teaching, helped people learn — more when the teaching was interactive. Kobayashi, 2019
People rated how well they understood everyday devices, tried to explain one step by step, and rated themselves lower afterwards. Rozenblit & Keil, 2002
Teach·AttentionNote closedStudent
Why does every word have to look at every other one? Couldn’t it just look at the words next to it?
You
Because what “it” means can depend on a word much earlier. Attention lets every word look back, so the model remembers what came before. That’s also why long inputs cost so much more.
Afterwards, against your notes
Unsupported
Your note says the weights are computed fresh for each input. Attention isn’t memory.
Attention
Question
How much more, and why that much?
How much more do long inputs cost, and why that much?Connect the dots.
Saying how a new idea connects to what you already know, in your own words, helps you understand it.
A [[link]] shows on both notes. Link related suggests the notes this one could link to, each with its reason, and adds none until you accept: the connection that counts is the sentence you write about why. The Map shows how it all connects.
Students asked to explain each line of a text to themselves learned more from it than students who read it twice. Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu & LaVancher, 1994
Link related·Attention is a weighted averageLink to your notes
Every abstraction hides a cost
Its example of attention hiding a quadratic cost behind one clean operation is this note's last point.
Linked under Connects toEmbeddings
The queries, keys and values a token's meaning is averaged from are projections of them.
AcceptDismiss
Connects to
Every abstraction hides a cost — Its example of attention hiding a quadratic cost behind one clean operation is this note's last point.
Worked examples
Three notebooks, worked through.
The two about notes take the method’s steps as far as each goes; receipts take a path of their own. Each says what it doesn’t do yet.
Understand a topic
From a question to what you can explain.
01Write it down
Make a project for the question you want answered — how do transformers work? — in the folder it's part of, and write what you know and what you don't as notes in it, or move them in from the Inbox.
02Work it out
Ask the Guide about any note, beside it: what a line means, an example; choose Research, and it answers from what the model knows, for you to check. What's missing lists the questions your notes don't answer yet. Then teach it back with the note closed, to a curious student who asks why, and see where your notes don't back you up.
03Make something of it
Answer what's missing in your own words, a note at a time, and tick each question off on the project's page. When you can explain it, write it up: the Guide arranges your sentences into an outline, and you publish it as a page you own.
Read the whole exampleWhat it doesn’t do yet
- It doesn't read a book or a paper you drop in to learn from: explanations come from the model, labelled as Graphite's.
- No spaced repetition: it doesn't schedule reviews.
Make something from it
From scattered notes to a first draft in your own words.
01Write it down
Give the article a project of its own, started as the question it answers, and drop everything into the Inbox as it comes — a line, a link, a paragraph you pasted. Move each note to the project when you know it belongs, or, with File my Inbox on, Graphite files it there.
02Work it out
On the project's page, find what's missing: the questions a reader would ask that your notes don't answer yet. Answer them in notes of your own, and teach it back with your notes closed to find what you can't explain yet.
03Make something of it
Ask for a draft, and the Guide arranges your own sentences in the order that explains it, marking each gap where it belongs; anything it can't find in your notes, it leaves out. Write the rest yourself, then publish it as a page or set it out as a script for a video.
Read the whole exampleWhat it doesn’t do yet
- It doesn't write the piece for you: the draft is your own sentences, arranged, with the gaps marked.
- No sync between devices: browser notes stay in that browser on that device.
A shoebox of receipts
The receipts already on your Mac, added up.
01Drop them in
Drop in the receipts already on your Mac — the photos in Photos › Utilities › Receipts, the PDFs from Mail or Downloads. Each is kept in the Inbox as it is.
02Find them filed
After a yes of its own, Graphite reads each one as printed — merchant, date, total, tax, payment — checks it on your computer, and files it under Receipts by its year, with the original beside it, unchanged. One it can't check waits in the Inbox with one question.
03Add them up
Receipts adds up each month per currency and by category, for Work, Personal or both. Export a CSV and the originals for your accountant, with no key. Ask your notebook what you spent on travel in September, and Graphite adds up the receipts and shows the ones behind the total.
Read the whole exampleWhat it doesn’t do yet
- No phone app yet: use Graphite in your phone's browser. Receipts stay in that browser unless you export them.
- No currency conversion: totals are per currency.
- Graphite isn't tax software. Totals are sums of what Graphite read and you checked.
And what you might use instead
Compared with a chat window
It writes for you, and a good answer scrolls away. Graphite answers about the note you're in and keeps the conversation beside it, asks what you haven't worked out yet, and arranges a draft from your own sentences — anything it can't find in your notes, it leaves out.
Compared with Obsidian
You start from a blank page and file everything yourself. Graphite keeps the same plain markdown files, files your Inbox into your folders and projects in the open, with Undo, and helps you make something of them in your own words.
Read the comparisonCompared with Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)
It starts from sources you add, in your Google account, and writes from them. Graphite starts from what you write down, keeps it as plain files, works with the AI you choose, checks what you understood against your own notes, and drafts only from your own sentences.
Read the comparison
Yours
Your notebook is a folder of files.
Every note — the folders and projects you make too, each a note of its own — and every receipt is a markdown file on your computer, with a receipt’s photo or PDF beside it, unchanged. Open them in Obsidian, in any editor, in Finder — Graphite notices when something changes outside it and picks the change up.
Links are [[wikilinks]], and which project or folder a note is in is one line of plain frontmatter. Delete the app and you keep everything, exactly as it was.
Why does attention matter.md
--- kind: project topic: "[[Machine learning]]" created: 2026-10-25 --- An article for people who use chatbots every day but have never read the paper: what attention does, in plain words, and why it makes long inputs expensive. It's done when it's published.
What Graphite writes is labelled.
What the Guide writes says so. A draft it arranged and the questions it asked are labelled Arranged by Graphite and Asked by Graphite, an answer or a research brief you keep with Add to note is the Guide's own block, marked with the Graphite mark, and a summary you accept is Graphite's own block, titled Summary. An edit it suggests is yours only once you accept it. You always know which words are yours.
Teaching is marked against your notes.
When you explain something back, Graphite marks it against what your notes say — not against whatever it happens to know.
Your key, and where it goes.
Your key goes only to the provider you chose, and you pay that provider for what you use, at their prices. In the Mac app, your key is kept in your Mac's Keychain — or, if you turn that off in Settings, in Graphite's own file on your Mac, unencrypted — and a request goes from the app's own server, running on your Mac, straight to your provider. In the browser, your key is kept in that browser and sent with each request, along with the notes it's about, through Graphite's server to your provider. The server passes them on and stores neither.
Nothing of yours is sent until you say so.
Asking Graphite about a note — or for what's missing, an outline, a draft, a summary, an edit or research — sends that note, the notes it links to and what you typed to your AI provider, only when you ask; asked about words you selected, it sends those words too, and asked about notes you selected together, it sends those notes. On a project's or a folder's page it sends that page and the notes in it, up to twelve, and the Guide says how many under its box. Asking your notebook sends your question and the notes that match it, found on your device, to your AI provider — only when you ask, and the answer shows what was sent. A question about money also sends a line for each receipt it may be about (merchant, date, currency, category, work or personal — never a total), and Graphite adds up the total on your device; on OpenRouter, it goes only to providers that keep nothing. A question no note or receipt matches sends nothing. Filing is off until you turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI, in each notebook. Then Graphite files that notebook's Inbox on its own: it sends each Inbox note's title and first lines, with the names of your projects and folders, to your AI provider — the notes waiting when you turn it on, then each new one a few seconds after you write it, and any waiting when you open the notebook. A note it leaves in the Inbox isn't sent again unless you change it, an answer you saved from asking your notebook isn't sent at all, and with a key for another provider filing stays off until you turn it on again. Reading receipts takes a yes of its own in each notebook. After it, Graphite sends each photo or PDF waiting in that notebook's Inbox to your AI provider with your key — a photo as a smaller JPEG copy without its location, a PDF as it is — and writes what it reads next to the original, in your notebook. Graphite's server keeps none of it; on OpenRouter, receipts go only to providers that keep nothing. Graphite logs which action ran, how long it took and the kind of any error — never a note, a question or a key. The site and the notebook in a browser count visits with Vercel Web Analytics — the page, the site you came from, your country, and your browser, system and kind of device — with no cookies, and never what you write. They also count each Mac download, and in the notebook each note made and each request Graphite answers — by its kind, never by its title or words. The Mac app counts nothing.
AI
Bring the AI you already use.
Works with Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek and more — paste a key, or sign in with OpenRouter. Graphite never charges for AI.
A Claude or Gemini subscription can't be used by other apps — Anthropic doesn't allow it, and Google offers no way to — so for those you'd use an API key, or OpenRouter. Signing in with ChatGPT needs OpenAI's approval, which we've asked for.
New to API keys? How to get an AI API key for Graphite says which provider to pick, how to make a key at each, and what light use costs.
- AnthropicClaude
- OpenAIGPT
- GoogleGemini
- xAIGrok
- MistralMistral models
- DeepSeekDeepSeek models
- GroqOpen models, fast
- OpenRouterMany models · sign in
- Vercel AI GatewayMany models
Price
A plan is coming. Your notes will never depend on it.
Today the notebook and the Guide work with your own AI key, and Graphite charges nothing. When the plan comes, it will pay for the Guide: filing, reading receipts, explaining, answering about a note, finding what's missing, arranging an outline or a draft from your sentences, suggesting edits, researching, connecting, teaching, asking your notebook and checking a page before you publish it. Without it, capture, opening, writing, linking, searching, the Map, the receipts' totals and export will always work — in the browser and on the Mac.
Coming soon
$39.99a year
or $4.99 a month — yearly is a third off
- 30 days free, with no card
- Your notes never lock
- Students and educators: $19.99 a year
- Your AI provider bills you for what you use
Practical guides
Start with a problem in your notebook.
Worked examples you can follow with or without Graphite, and how to get an AI key.
How to organize notes without folders
A worked example for organizing scattered notes around ideas, keeping one copy of each thought, and finding it again. Includes a reusable Markdown example.
AI for Obsidian notes while keeping your Markdown files
Compare ways to use AI with an Obsidian vault, then test a three-note example for citations, missing answers, file changes, and provider access.
The Feynman technique with AI, using your own notes
Practice explaining from memory with AI as a curious listener. A complete teach-back example, source-checking checklist, and reusable note template.
How to get an AI API key for Graphite
What an AI API key is, which provider to choose, and how to make one at Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, Groq, OpenRouter or the Vercel AI Gateway, with what light use costs, free tiers, spending limits and how to revoke a key.
Questions
Before you start.
How much does it cost?
Graphite charges nothing today: the notebook and the Guide work with your own AI key, and your AI provider bills you for what you use. A plan is coming — $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month, after 30 days free with no card — and it will pay for the Guide. Your notes will never lock: capture, opening, writing, linking, searching, the Map, the receipts' totals and export will always work without it.
What are folders and projects?
A folder is for something you keep learning about — Bitcoin, AI, design. You never finish one. A project is something you're making from what you learn — an article, a video, a talk. It starts as a question and ends when you've made it. You set up your own from the + beside Folders in the sidebar — New folder or New project — and each is a note: a project's page has your words about it, the notes in it, what's missing from it and a line of what Graphite notices — how many notes, how many questions are open, when you last taught it back, when a draft was started — and a folder's page has its projects and its notes. In the sidebar, a folder or a project opens onto what's in it. A project holds what you're making; links hold what you know. A note is in one project at a time, and links to as many notes as it likes. Which one a note is in is one line of its frontmatter — project:, or topic: for a folder — so its file never moves, and Obsidian reads it too. Every note in no project or folder waits in the Inbox until you move it — drag it onto one in the sidebar — or, once you turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI, Graphite files it.
What can I make from a note?
An outline or a first draft, arranged from your own sentences with the gaps marked; a script for a video, set out as scenes; or one web page you own, as a file. Copy as Markdown is there for a blog or a newsletter. Before you make anything, What's missing lists the questions between your notes and something you could publish, and Teach it back checks you can explain it. Each starts from the note you're in, in Actions beside the Guide — and what's missing from the Guide too. What the Guide writes is labelled as its own: what's missing and an outline go into the note only when you keep them, and a draft into a new note of its own. Format tidies a note's headings, lists and spacing, shown change by change for you to accept or reject. Without a key, publishing a page, Copy as Markdown and the plain version of a script still work.
Does the AI write in my notes?
Only when you keep something or accept a change, with Undo. And when it drafts, it arranges your own sentences; anything it can't find in your notes it leaves out or asks you for. An edit it suggests — formatting a note, or what you asked of a selection — and a summary show in the note, change by change, and nothing is written until you accept them: each one, all of them, or none. A summary goes in as Graphite's own block, titled Summary. What's missing goes into the note as a section of its own and an outline under a heading, when you keep them, and an answer or a research brief, when you choose Add to note, as the Guide's own block, marked with the Graphite mark; a draft you keep is a new note of its own, and a script for a video is saved as one when you choose. Each is a line in the Logbook. With File my Inbox on, it also writes one line of frontmatter on a note it files — project:, or topic: for a folder — and nothing else. It never changes a word you wrote unless you accept the change.
Does Graphite write my articles?
No. It arranges a first draft from your own sentences and marks what's missing; you write the rest.
Can I publish?
Yes, any note but a receipt, as a page you own. Publish a page makes one web page of it, as a single HTML file, downloaded in the web notebook. Graphite doesn't host it and uploads nothing: anyone you give the file to, or who visits where you put it, can read it. Check it first, with a key, points out what a stranger wouldn't follow and anything that looks private, and changes nothing. Copy as Markdown is there for a blog or a newsletter.
Does Graphite make videos?
It writes a script for a video from your note: scenes, what to say and what to show. It doesn't make the video itself. With a key, the Guide drafts the script when you ask, labelled as its own; without one, you get a plain version, a scene for each part of the note, quoting its first lines. Copy it, or save it as a note.
What does “teach it back” mean?
You explain an idea in your own words, with the note closed, to Graphite playing a curious student. It asks why, asks for an example, and asks what your words mean — it never corrects you and never gives the answer away. Afterwards it steps out of the role and marks your explanation against your own notes: unsupported, question or link, never a score. Each gap becomes a question under What's missing in the note you taught.
Is Graphite an AI agent?
Only in a narrow sense: in a notebook where you've turned on File my Inbox, it files what's in the Inbox on its own, into the project or folder each note clearly belongs to, and where you've said yes to reading receipts, it reads each photo or PDF there as a receipt. Everything else waits for you to ask: answering, explaining, connecting, teaching it back, finding what's missing, arranging an outline or a draft from your sentences, suggesting an edit, researching, and drafting a script for a video — and nothing it writes goes into a note of yours until you keep it or accept it. It says what it did in the Logbook, and you can undo it. On its own, it never changes your words, never deletes anything, and never moves a file you put somewhere yourself, except a photo or a PDF in the Inbox, which moves once, when it's filed as a receipt, and Undo puts it back.
Does the AI organize my notes without asking?
It files them, once you turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI; until then it files nothing. Then it files that notebook's Inbox on its own: it sends each Inbox note's title and first lines, with the names of your projects and folders, to your AI provider — the notes waiting when you turn it on, then each new one a few seconds after you write it, and any waiting when you open the notebook — and puts each note in the project, or else the folder, it clearly belongs to, with one line of frontmatter. With a key for another provider, filing stays off until you turn it on again. A note about something none of your projects covers gets a suggestion to start one; it never starts a project without your click. It never writes in a note on its own: what's missing, an outline or a draft are written only when you ask for them, and go into your notes only when you keep them, and an edit it suggests is written only when you accept it. Receipts take a second yes: after it, it reads each photo or PDF in the Inbox — a photo goes to your AI provider as a smaller JPEG copy without its location, a PDF as it is; a DeepSeek or Groq key is sent neither, and an xAI key no PDFs — checks what it read on your computer, and files the receipt under Receipts by its year, moving the original there beside it. A receipt it can't check waits in the Inbox with one question. It writes each act in the Logbook — what changed, and why — with Undo, and keeps the Logbook for 90 days in the app, outside your notes. It never changes your words, never deletes anything, and never moves a file you put somewhere yourself: a photo or a PDF in the Inbox moves once, when it's filed as a receipt, and Undo puts it back.
What happened to my explainers, nodes and concepts?
They're where they were, word for word, every field and file. Since 23 October 2026, everything is a note: an explainer shows in the sidebar as a project, by its question, with the notes filed under it, and nodes, concepts and questions asked on their own are notes like any other — in the project they're filed under, or in the Inbox while they're in none — and Search (⌘O) and the Map find every one. Nothing was moved or rewritten. What's on your mind?, note types, the Network, and the Questions, Concepts, Nodes and Explainers places left the app that day; the release notes say what took their place.
What happens to my receipts?
They stay in your notebook, as files. A photo or a PDF you drop in is kept in the Inbox as it is. Reading them takes a yes of its own: after it, Graphite sends each photo or PDF in the Inbox to your AI provider with your key, a photo as a smaller JPEG copy without its location and a PDF as it is. It reads each one as printed — merchant, date, total, tax, tip, payment, category — checks what it read on your computer (the parts add up to the total, the date is a real day, the currency is a known code, it isn't one you already have), and files it under Receipts by its year, moving the original there beside it, unchanged. One it can't check waits in the Inbox with one question. Receipts adds them up by month, per currency and by category, for Work, Personal or both, and exports a CSV and the originals without a key, a subscription or the network. Totals are never converted between currencies, and they're sums of what Graphite read and you checked: Graphite isn't tax software. With a DeepSeek or Groq key it can't read photos or PDFs, and with an xAI key it can't read PDFs; it says so, and you can paste a receipt's text instead. It doesn't read a PDF over 2.8 MB: paste the receipt's text instead. In a browser that can't open a HEIC photo, it keeps the photo but doesn't read it: add it as a JPEG, or use the Mac app. In the browser, receipts are kept in that browser: export them, or use the Mac app, to keep them for years.
What happens to my Obsidian folders?
They stay where they are. In the Mac app, point Graphite at your vault and it leaves every file where you put it, except a photo or a PDF in the vault's Inbox folder that, after your yes, it reads as a receipt: that moves once, when it's filed, and Undo puts it back. Graphite never moves a note out of a folder of yours, and a note in one stays out of the Inbox and is never filed. A file it didn't make is a note. New notes go into Notes, Graphite's own folder on disk — and so do the projects and folders you make in Graphite, each a note — and receipts under Receipts, by year. Notes stay plain markdown, [[wikilinks]] and callouts use the same syntax — including links written with a folder path or a .md ending, like [[Clients/Plan]] — and frontmatter fields Graphite doesn't use are kept exactly as they were. A project: or topic: field your vault already uses counts only when it links to a project or a folder you've set up in Graphite, so it doesn't empty your Inbox. JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP and HEIC images and PDFs show in your notes: ![[photo.jpg]] shows the picture, and ![[scan.pdf]] a card that opens it. Showing one never changes it or adds a file beside it. Other attachments, like SVG, video and audio, stay in the files untouched. The browser version keeps its notes in the browser and can't open a folder.
What if Graphite explains something wrong?
It can. Its explanations are labelled as its own and say where people usually get confused, so you know what to check. What Research brings is the model's own knowledge, not a search of the web: it answers in the Guide with a few findings, then a line that says what to check and where, and adds nothing to the note unless you choose Add to note. The Guide is asked to say plainly when it isn't sure and not to invent a source or a link, and you check what it says before you keep it. When you teach it back, Graphite never marks you by what it “knows” — only by your own notes.
How is this different from Gemini Notebook?
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), renamed on 16 July 2026, starts from sources you add, in your Google account, and works with Gemini. Graphite starts from what you write down: once you turn on File my Inbox, it files it into your folders and projects; when you ask, it finds what's missing and arranges a first draft from your own sentences, leaving out anything it can't find in your notes; it keeps everything as plain markdown files you can open in any editor, works with the AI you choose, and asks you to teach what you learned back, marking your explanation against your own notes.
Do I need an API key?
Not for your notes: writing, search, links and the Map work without one, and so do your folders and projects, tags, publishing a page, Copy as Markdown and the plain version of a script for a video. The Guide needs one, because it calls a model — filing, reading receipts, explaining, answering about a note, finding what's missing, arranging an outline or a draft from your sentences, suggesting edits, researching, connecting, teaching, asking your notebook and checking a page before you publish it. Paste a key from any major provider in Settings → AI, or connect OpenRouter instead. How to get an AI API key for Graphite walks through each provider: where to make a key, what light use costs, and how to cap what it can spend.
Which AI providers does it work with?
Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (GPT), Google (Gemini), xAI (Grok), Mistral, DeepSeek, Groq, OpenRouter and the Vercel AI Gateway. Paste a key from any of them into Settings and Graphite recognises which it is — or sign in with OpenRouter instead of pasting one. You pay the provider for what you use, at their prices; Graphite never charges for AI. A Claude or Gemini subscription can't be used by other apps — Anthropic doesn't allow it, and Google offers no way to — so for those you'd use an API key, or OpenRouter. Signing in with ChatGPT needs OpenAI's approval, which we've asked for.
Why a subscription, when I bring my own key?
Your key pays your AI provider for the model's words. The plan, when it comes, will pay for Graphite: the Guide's explaining, connecting, teaching and filing, and the work of making them good. It will be one plan — $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month, after 30 days free with no card — and nothing about your notes will depend on it.
Where are my notes?
On your computer, as plain markdown files in a folder: in the Mac app a new notebook is Documents/Graphite/My notebook, unless you choose another. In the browser version, notes are stored in that browser on that device.
Is there a Windows or Linux version?
Not yet. The desktop app is for Macs with Apple silicon, on macOS 13 or later. On an Intel Mac, Windows or Linux, use Graphite in your browser, with your notes stored in that browser.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes, in your phone's browser. Write a note, arrange the Inbox, read and edit notes, add a receipt, or ask Graphite from its button above the bar at the bottom. The sidebar, the note and the margin open one at a time so your note has room. Notes and receipts stay in that browser on that device; they don't sync with the Mac app or another browser. Export a copy to keep them. There's no separate phone app yet.
Does it work offline?
Writing, linking, searching and the Map all work offline — your notes are files on your computer. The Guide needs a connection, because it calls your AI provider.
Pick one thing you’re learning and make something of it.
Write it in the Inbox, ask the Guide what’s missing, teach it back with your notes closed, and by the end of an afternoon you can have a first draft in your own words.
The notebook and the Guide work today with your own AI key. A plan — $39.99 a year or $4.99 a month, after 30 days free with no card — is coming. Your notes never lock. In beta, in your browser and on the Mac. Mac app: Apple silicon · macOS 13 or later. Your notes stay in this browser on this device. Export a copy to keep them; they don’t sync with your Mac.

