March 2023
Jacobs: eyes on the street
Clipped while reading. “Sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow.”
Notes that find each other.
Kept links what you write, brings old notes back when they matter, and answers questions from your own notes.
Used by people at
Your hands never leave the keyboard.
Three shortcuts cover most of a working day. Press them on this page and the keys respond.
- ⌥Space
Quick capture
Opens a capture box over whatever app you are in. Type, hit Enter, keep working.
- [[
Link a note
Start typing a title and pick from your notes. The other note gets a backlink automatically.
- ⌘K
Search everything
Titles, full text, highlights and voice memo transcripts, in one box.
draft.md
No links yet. Linked notes will show a backlink to this draft.
The note you forgot comes back.
Kept reads what you are writing now and brings up older notes that say something related. Here is how that plays out.
The next two years
Filed, then forgotten
No tags, no folder, no links. It sits among everything else you saved, which is how most notes end up.
Today, 9:14
Why our office floor feels empty
You start a draft for the leadership offsite: people stopped bumping into each other after the move to the new floor.
Today, 9:16
Related: Jacobs: eyes on the street
The Related panel brings the 2023 clipping back. Same idea, different building: casual contact needs foot traffic and a reason to linger.
Shares: casual contact, foot trafficRelated
Today, 9:20
One link, a better argument
You type [[ and link it. The draft now quotes Jacobs, and the old note shows a backlink to the new one.
Ask your notes
Answers in your own words, with sources.
Ask in plain language. Kept answers only from your notes and links every claim to the note it came from.
Nothing asked yet.
Pick a question on the left. The answer cites the notes it came from, and each citation opens the note.
Your notes are files you own.
Every note is a Markdown file in a folder you choose. Sync is end-to-end encrypted, and optional.
- Daily 2026-09-22.md
- Desire paths.md
- Jacobs eyes on the street.md
- Local-first software.md
- Novel chapter 4 outline.md
- Third places.md
- Thesis chapter 2.md
- Weekly review.md
- Why our office floor feels empty.md
--- created: 2023-03-14 --- # Jacobs: eyes on the street > Sidewalk contacts are the small change from > which a city's wealth of public life may grow. Streets feel safe when people have reasons to be on them at different times of day. See also [[Third places]], [[Desire paths]]
Open it in any editor, back it up with anything, grep it. If Kept disappeared tomorrow, your notes would not.
Encrypted before it leaves
Notes are encrypted on your device. Our servers only ever hold data they cannot read.
How people use it.
“Kept cited a 2019 field note I had completely forgotten. It was the missing piece of the paper.”
“Every scene links to its characters. When I rewrite, Related reminds me what Ilse already knows.”
“My lit review lived in four apps. Now it is one folder of Markdown and a graph I actually open.”
“Last spring's interview notes came back while I wrote this quarter's plan. They changed the roadmap.”
“Local files and encryption got me to try it. The capture shortcut is why I stayed.”
“I link incident notes to design docs with two brackets. Six months later the postmortem finds me.”
“Book highlights arrive overnight and sit next to the lecture drafts they belong with.”
Free on one device. $8 for all of them.
Free
$0
For one device plus the web app.
- Unlimited notes
- Links, backlinks and the graph
- Quick capture and web clipper
- Plain Markdown files
Pro
$8/ month, billed yearly
Everything in Free, on every device you own.
- Sync across all devices
- End-to-end encryption
- Ask your notes
- Version history
- Highlights from books and articles
- Voice memos, transcribed
Start free
Upgrade from inside the app when you want sync.