Plate I — fleeting note
Seedling
“idea: what if meetings had trailers?”
Caught in passing. Five seconds, one keystroke, no pressure to finish it. Most seedlings stay small — and that is fine.
A digital garden for your thoughts
Plant a note.
Grow a mind.
Most apps store notes like boxes in an attic. Cortex tends them like a garden — seedlings caught in passing, grafted and pruned, until a few become evergreen.
Growth stages
The three ages of a note
Plate II — developing note
Budding
“attention residue — linked to thesis ch. 3, deep work”
Grafted to its neighbors. Links form, sources attach, the idea thickens. Cortex shows you every connection.
Plate III — permanent note
Evergreen
“essay: why I quit the feed — 14 sources, revised 9 times”
Dense and permanent. Evergreen notes are the ones you build on — and the ones Cortex never lets you lose.
Tending
A garden keeps itself, with a little help.
Grafting
Links, not folders
Graft one note onto another with a link, and both grow new branches. Backlinks show every graft ever made.
Seasons
A weekly tending pass
Cortex surfaces what needs water — or pruning — on a gentle schedule. You review; the garden stays young.
Native soil
Local-first roots
Your garden grows on your ground: plain Markdown files, encrypted when they sync, readable anywhere.
Harvest
Pick anything, any season
Export a single note or whole beds whenever you like. Your words travel — no lock-in, no frost damage.
“My notes used to be where ideas went to die. Now they're where they go to grow.”
Begin
The best time to plant a note was years ago.
The second-best time is now.
Plant your first noteFree for your first 1,000 notes · Germinates in seconds · Exports as Markdown