OpenNote

Capture fragments today. Make better decisions tomorrow.

Your thoughts, compounded.

Quick Start · How It Works · Examples · Why Plain Files?

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You're on the bus and a thought hits you. You open Claude on your phone and say: Asymmetry is the whole game when the future is uncertain. Hit send. That's it. Claude handles the rest — organizes it into a markdown file, commits, and pushes to your Git repo. Timestamped, categorized, searchable, and yours forever.

Highlights

• Capture from anywhere — Phone, desktop, or CLI. Drop a thought, a screenshot, a URL, or meeting notes. No app to install.
• AI organizes for you — Just dump content in. AI structures it into clean markdown files, auto-categorized by topic and date.
• You own your data — Plain markdown + Git. No vendor lock-in. No cloud database. grep works.

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The real power: AI that evolves you Most note apps are just storage. OpenNote is different — every note you capture becomes part of AI's understanding of you. Over weeks and months, your info bank accumulates fragments: a product idea on Monday, a meeting note on Wednesday, a quote that resonated on Friday, a frustration you vented about on Sunday. Individually, they're just notes. But AI can read across all of them — and surface the hidden threads you'd never notice yourself. Ask it to brainstorm, and it doesn't start from zero. It draws on everything you've ever captured — your interests, your patterns of thinking, your recurring frustrations, your half-formed ideas — and weaves them into insights that feel like they came from your subconscious. Because in a way, they did.

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Quick Start

Expects Claude Code and GitHub CLI (gh) installed.

gh repo fork ryannli/opennote --clone
cd opennote
./setup.sh

Start capturing:

claude "Asymmetry is the whole game when the future is uncertain."

Or open Claude on your phone and just start talking.

How It Works

You (phone or desktop)          ← the only thing you do
  → Claude Code                 ← everything below is automatic
    → structured markdown file
      → Git commit & push
        → GitHub (synced)

Send a message. That's it. No manual filing, no tagging, no folder management.

Examples

You send	AI creates
"Asymmetry is the whole game when the future is uncertain."	notes/2026-03-09_asymmetry-and-uncertainty.md — timestamped note with your thought, auto-categorized
sends a photo of a whiteboard	notes/2026-03-09_whiteboard-notes.md — extracts all text from the image into a searchable note
https://example.com/interesting-article	notes/2026-03-09_interesting-article.md — fetches, summarizes, and saves with context
"what patterns do you see in my notes from the past week?"	explorations/2026-03-09_weekly-patterns.md — finds recurring themes across your notes

Directory Structure

opennote/
├── CLAUDE.md          # AI instructions — customize how notes are organized
├── notes/             # One file per topic, organized by date
│   ├── 2026-03-06_product-ideas.md
│   ├── 2026-03-07_thoughts-after-meeting-alex.md
│   └── ...
└── explorations/      # You + AI thinking together through your notes
    └── 2026-03-10_weekly-themes.md

• notes/ — Where everything lands. Each note has YAML frontmatter (date, time, summary) for quick scanning.
• explorations/ — You and AI think together — pick a lens, and explore your notes to find patterns and ideas you wouldn't see alone.
• CLAUDE.md — The brain of the system. Edit this to change how AI captures and organizes your content.

Why Plain Files?

Plain files aren't just a technical choice — they're what makes the "evolve" part possible. AI can read your full history of thinking, across any time range, any topic. That's what lets it connect a frustration from January to an idea from March to a conversation from last week — and show you something you never noticed.

	OpenNote	Typical note apps
Format	Plain markdown	Proprietary database
AI access	Full — AI reads everything, connects anything	Limited to what the app exposes
History	Full Git history	Limited or none
Search	grep, GitHub, or ask AI	Built-in only
Portability	Works with any editor	Locked to one app
Privacy	Your repo, your rules	Their servers

Customization

OpenNote is configured through CLAUDE.md — the instruction file that tells Claude how to organize your notes. Edit it to match your workflow. It's just a markdown file.

License

MIT