Auto Archives Notes

Auto Archives Notes is a small, opinionated notes app built as a proof of concept for turning raw, messy inputs into a structured personal system.

This is an ongoing project and a clear proof of concept:

• The product is still evolving and UX details will change.
• The on-device model path is intentionally conservative and may fall back to local heuristics depending on OS availability.
• Data formats and “Notion-like” properties may change as the app matures.

What It Does

The app is designed around a simple loop:

1. Capture a thought quickly (typing or voice).
2. Submit.
3. Forget.
4. Come back to notes that have been cleaned up and enriched.

When you submit a note, the app attempts to:

• Rewrite/correct the note (without changing meaning).
• Generate a short title.
• Add lightweight “Notion-like” properties: kind, status, priority, area, project, people, due date.
• Extract a one-sentence summary and action items.
• Add a small set of tags.

Key Features

• Fast “composer” for capturing notes.
• Voice recording + transcription.
• Background enhancement (so capture stays fast).
• Simple inbox-style list with search and filters.
• Export all notes as a single JSON file.

How Enhancement Works

There are two enhancement paths:

• Apple on-device foundation models (preferred, when available): uses FoundationModels to rewrite and extract structured fields.
• Local heuristic fallback: uses deterministic/NL-based heuristics to generate usable titles, tags, and fields when the model is unavailable.

To avoid concurrency issues with on-device APIs, model calls are run through a single serial queue.

Export Notes

From the main menu, use Export to save a JSON snapshot of the entire database.

Export includes:

• Metadata (exportedAt, count)
• For each note: ids, timestamps, raw/enhanced text, properties, summary, action items, tags, people, links

Project Status

This repo is a working prototype. Areas that are intentionally still in-progress:

• UX polish and interaction design
• Better retrieval and “chat with notes” exploration
• More reliable classification, especially around due dates and projects
• Settings, privacy controls, and better conflict/edge-case handling
• Export/import compatibility guarantees

Development

• Open Auto archives notes.xcodeproj in Xcode
• Build and run the Auto archives notes scheme

Shortcut Metadata Workflow (iPad)

The current title-generation flow is shortcut-driven and designed for iPad use:

• A sparkles button next to + triggers metadata generation for untitled notes with body text.
• The app launches a named Apple Shortcut via URL callback (shortcuts://x-callback-url/run-shortcut).
• The shortcut is expected to return strict JSON:
  • {"title":"3-5 word title","summary":"one sentence summary"}
• If callback data is missing, the app falls back to clipboard on return to foreground.
• If the shortcut is missing, the app prompts installation using an iCloud shortcut link.

Full setup, required shortcut actions, JSON contract, and troubleshooting:

• docs/shortcut-metadata-workflow.md

Website

This repo includes a GitHub Pages site in docs/.