Type a thought. A local model files it, tags it and links it to what you already wrote. Ask a question later and get an answer beside the notes it came from, sentence by sentence, so you can check it. Everything runs on your own computer: no account, no cloud, no telemetry. Your notes are one SQLite file in a folder you control, and the whole app works with no model running at all.
capture a thought
-> Atlas files it
-> ask a question
-> an answer, with the notes behind it
Thirteen more screenshots: Notes, Chat, Graph, Library, the OCR workspace, boards, concept maps, Documents, Timeline, Reminders, the features browser, the command palette and Appearance
Notes: captured, categorised and linked to what they relate to
Chat: ask in plain English, with skills, web search and agent mode beside the box
Graph: your notes as a map, coloured by category, linked by meaning
Library: everything you have made, in one place
OCR workspace: a scanned page read locally, region by region, checkable and editable before it becomes a note
Boards: cards, drawings and images you arrange yourself
Mind maps: a branch with Tab, one beside it with Enter, core ideas told apart by shape, fill and size
Documents: a long-form editor with four views, writing checks and full history
Timeline: every note on a time axis
Reminders: due dates linked to the note they came from
Tools & features: everything the app can do, grouped and searchable
Command palette: Ctrl/⌘-K reaches a command, a note, a document, a file or a board
Appearance: ten themes, your own accent, type, density and corners
- Get started
- What it does
- The AI, and life without it
- Your data
- Documentation
- Developing
- Status
- Licence
Three ways in. None needs a terminal.
Windows. Download MemoryMap-AI-Setup-*.exe from the
latest release
and run it. The app opens in its own window.
What the SmartScreen prompt means.
Linux. Download MemoryMap-AI-*-linux-x86_64.zip from the same page,
unzip it and run MemoryMap AI. Needs GTK and WebKit (python3-gi and
gir1.2-webkit2-4.1, or your distribution's equivalent).
macOS, or from source on any platform. Clone the repository and run
./start-desktop.sh (on Windows, double-click start-desktop.bat), or
./start.sh for a browser tab. The launcher builds a private Python
environment, installs everything and opens the app. --doctor on either
one checks the machine and prints a table with a fix per row. A
step-by-step version for first-time terminal users is in
docs/INSTALL.md.
Add the AI afterwards: install Ollama and pull a
model that fits your machine. Which one, from "runs on a laptop with no
GPU" upwards, is in docs/MODELS.md. Any OpenAI-compatible
server works too: LM Studio, llama.cpp's llama-server, Jan, vLLM.
Capture. Type, paste, dictate (local Whisper) or draw. The AI picks a
category by meaning, or asks you in guided mode, and says which. Free text
can be split into separate, auto-linked notes. Notes take Markdown inline,
including [[wiki links]], ~~strikethrough~~ and ==highlights== in
six colours.
Ask. A question returns a conversational answer and the notes behind it, side by side, with each sentence linked to the note it came from. Chat is saved and resumable. In Agent mode the assistant has 58 tools to search, link, organise and act on your notebook; anything destructive asks first, and every step it takes is shown.
See the shape of it. The Graph draws your notes as a map, coloured by category and linked by meaning, with the reason for each link written down. The Timeline puts every note on a time axis. The Dashboard shows your capture streak, statistics, a weekly digest and whatever widgets you choose.
Write at length. Documents is a long-form editor with Live, Source, Split and Read views, a formatting toolbar, spelling and style checks you can click on, version history, and code files with line numbers.
Think on a canvas. The Whiteboard holds sketches, shapes, images and note cards on a pannable surface. A board can be a mind map: a root topic with branches you grow by hand or from your notes, exportable as Markdown or OPML.
Keep everything in one Library. Notes, documents, chats, files, tags, bookmarks, the recycle bin and the activity log. Every image you add is read three ways where each is available (a caption, a vision-model transcription and Tesseract OCR), all editable, all searchable. Attach any file to a chat message: images go to a vision model, and documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and code are imported with their text extracted. Scanned PDFs are read page by page by an OCR model.
Remember. Reminders with priority, repeats and snooze, or type "call Sam tomorrow evening" and let the AI schedule it.
Automate. 20 built-in skills (and your own) run multi-step jobs over the notebook as a visible checklist, one step at a time, with each tool call shown. An optional background librarian tags, links and flags duplicates on a schedule you set. It never deletes anything.
Also: a command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+K), read-aloud, opt-in web search,
themes over several colour palettes, interface zoom, daily local backups,
and Atlas, an in-app guide reachable from the status bar on every tab, which
answers "how do I" questions from the app's own documentation without ever
reading your notes.
MemoryMap is built around a local model, and built to work when there is none. With no model running, notes are filed as Uncategorised, search uses full-text matching with stemming and spelling correction, and every other feature keeps working. A dot in the header always says what the AI is doing.
- Any local model. Ollama by default; any OpenAI-compatible server by setting a URL. Settings > Models shows the sampling parameters and starts each at the value the model's own file recommends.
- Small models are first-class. Skills and tool use have a small-model mode that gives a 4B model one step and one tool at a time, with recovery when it skips a step.
- Search by meaning is optional and off by default. Turn it on and questions match ideas rather than words, using a local embedding model through Ollama.
- Settings > Packages installs the optional pieces (dictation, the desktop window, search by meaning) from inside the app. None of them is needed for the core.
Everything lives in one folder: memorymap.db (your notes), preferences.json,
uploads/ (attachments and sketches) and backups/ (daily local
snapshots). Set MEMORYMAP_DATA_DIR to put it somewhere else. Export to
JSON, CSV or Markdown from Settings at any time.
Nothing leaves your machine unless you ask it to. The server binds to localhost, the AI is confined to your own network, web search is off by default and sends only your search words, and private notes are encrypted at rest with a key derived from your password. The full model, including session expiry, the CSRF and CSP protections and what to do if you forget your password, is in docs/PRIVACY.md. To report a vulnerability, see SECURITY.md.
| Document | What it answers |
|---|---|
| INSTALL | The Windows installer, the launcher script, manual setup, updating and uninstalling |
| MODELS | Which model to pick for your machine, and using a backend other than Ollama |
| PRIVACY | What touches the network and when, private-note encryption, session security |
| TROUBLESHOOTING | The common problems and their fixes |
| ARCHITECTURE | How the pieces fit: request lifecycle, data model, the AI stack, where to change any given thing |
| DESIGN | The design system every screen is written against |
| ROADMAP | What is open, in order, with the reasoning |
| CHANGELOG | What changed, release by release |
| CONTRIBUTING | Setup, tests and opening a pull request |
| SECURITY | How to report a vulnerability |
pytest # 3,600+ tests, fifteen to eighteen minutes, fully offline
bash scripts/gate.sh --changed # the routine local gate: lints, node --check, ruff, the tests that name your files
ruff check . # what CI lints with
node --check frontend/app.js # the frontend has no build step
Tests use a throwaway database and fake every AI call, so they need no GPU, no model and no network. They also cannot see the interface, so a frontend change is driven in a real browser before it is called done; docs/ARCHITECTURE.md says how.
src/memorymap/
__main__.py entry point: python -m memorymap [--desktop]
core/ config, database and migrations, backups, logs, crypto
entry/ notes: create, read, link, soft-delete, the audit log
ai/ model clients, filing, the agent and its tools, skills, embeddings, voice
search/ full-text and semantic search, opt-in web search
api/ the FastAPI app, one router per feature
frontend/ plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript, served as-is
tests/ pytest, every AI call faked
docs/ user documentation, architecture, design system, roadmap
Migrations are additive by default: a new column is added the next time the app opens an older database. Alembic is wired in behind that for the day a rename or drop is needed. CI runs ruff, CodeQL and the full suite on Python 3.11 to 3.13 on every push.
Version 0.3.1. The core is built and stable: capture, chat with checkable answers, the graph, documents, boards and mind maps, the OCR workspace, private notes, themes, desktop packaging for Windows and Linux. The interface was rebuilt on one design system in this release, measured rather than eyeballed, and the in-app guide has a name. What comes next, in order, is in docs/ROADMAP.md; what changed is in CHANGELOG.md.
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.
You may use, study, modify and share this, and anything built on it must stay under the same licence, including a modified copy run as a network service. That last clause is why the AGPL was chosen: MemoryMap is a local-first app, and the licence keeps a closed, hosted version of it from being offered back to the people it was written for.