I don’t want AI in my notes app

5 October 2026 · Rob Schmitt

I came to AI agents through my work as a software developer, but what surprised me was how useful they became outside coding: the house, things I’m thinking of buying, and remembering why I decided something six months ago and have since completely forgotten.

The trouble is that every conversation starts from nothing. The agent knows a huge amount about the world and almost nothing about mine. It doesn’t know which boiler I have, how my servers are set up, or that I’ve already looked into this exact question and ruled half the options out. So I’d spend the first few messages explaining myself, then do it all again the next time.

So I started writing the useful context down: model numbers, how the servers fit together, the decisions I’d made and why, the research behind a purchase, where each project had got to.

Then I let the agents at them. They can search my notes, read the ones that matter, update them when we’ve learned something new and write new ones when we’ve worked something out.

My notes used to be somewhere I went to look things up myself, when I remembered to. Now the agents use them too, and the more I write down, the less I have to explain. It’s also the first time I’ve kept notes tidy for more than a fortnight, which my past self would find hard to believe.

But I still want a normal notes app. I don’t want AI to become the only way I get at my own knowledge. Sometimes I want to ask an agent a question about my notes, and sometimes I just want to browse them myself, on whatever device I happen to be using.

That’s a big part of why I’m building Soot, my notes app for Mac, iPad and iPhone. I wanted something simple enough for someone who has never heard of Markdown, and somewhere I enjoy writing. Underneath, every note is an ordinary Markdown file in a folder you choose, so my agents can work with the same notes I do.

I don’t want AI in my notes app. I want my notes to be useful to AI.