Smart Notes
AI note-taking application
Every note app eventually asks you to become a librarian. Smart Notes was built on the opposite premise: capture should cost nothing, and the organising should happen after the fact.
— Summary
A note-taking application where capture is instant and structure is inferred — search, linking and summarisation applied to notes without asking the writer to file anything.
- Industry
- Productivity Software
- Product
- AI note-taking application
- Duration
- Phased delivery, ongoing
- Team
- Glassbridge product, design and engineering
The challenge
Fast capture and rich structure pull against each other. Folder-first tools lose the note that was never filed; AI-first tools stall at the moment of writing while they think.
The approach
- 01
Made local capture the write path and treated every enrichment — tagging, linking, summarising — as an asynchronous pass over notes already saved
- 02
Resolved sync with per-field merge rather than last-write-wins, so two devices editing the same note both keep their edits
- 03
Combined lexical and semantic retrieval so exact phrases and half-remembered ideas find the same note
- 04
Kept the model out of the critical path entirely — the app is fully usable with no network and no inference available
Stack
- TypeScript
- React
- Node.js
- PostgreSQL
- Vector search
- Claude API
The outcome
Notes are captured at typing speed, remain searchable without manual filing, and survive editing on two devices at once without a conflict copy.
- First, always
Offline
First, always
- Notes lost to sync conflicts
0
Notes lost to sync conflicts
- Search across every note
Semantic
Search across every note
Engagement
Scope
- Product strategy
- Interface design
- Application engineering
- Retrieval & AI integration
Duration
Phased delivery, ongoing
Team
Glassbridge product, design and engineering
— Next
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