Your notes, set like the morning paper.
Slate is a private notes app with the instincts of an editorial desk. File essays, logs, lists and half-formed ideas through the day — then open them each morning as a composed front page, with a lead story, a reading queue, and the threads you keep returning to.
A private paper, written by you.
Most notes apps are a drawer you throw paper into. Slate is the editor who reads the drawer overnight and hands you a front page.
Write through the day
Drop in an essay, a log, a list, a stray idea — whatever the day hands you. Every note is typed, tagged and dated. No folders to maintain, no blank-page ceremony.
The desk lays it out
Overnight, Slate sets your notes like a newspaper: a pinned lead story, the recent column, the tags you keep returning to, a pull-quote from your own notebook.
Open tomorrow’s edition
Each morning your desk greets you with a front page of your own thinking — a private daily paper with a circulation of one. Read it back, then write the next.
This is what your desk looks like.
Save a link. Get the gist.
Your reading queue is more than a list of links. Paste a URL and Slate drafts the desk read — a one-line synthesis and the points worth keeping, so a saved article is already useful before you’ve found the time to read it.
It runs on your bookmarks only — the desk read is a convenience for things you found elsewhere, not a reader of your own writing.
- 01Comprehension and recall fall off sharply once reading outpaces inner speech.
- 02Re-reading a paragraph is a feature of careful attention, not a failure of it.
- 03A short written reaction fixes more of an essay than a highlighter ever does.
- 04The texts worth keeping are usually the ones that refused to be skimmed.
Written for one reader.
A notebook only works if you can be honest in it. Slate is built so that you can be — kept private, kept encrypted, and kept portable.
A circulation of one
Every note and bookmark belongs to your account alone. There is no shared feed, no public profile, nothing to opt out of. The desk is yours.
Locked in the drawer
Note and bookmark content is encrypted in the database. A copy of the raw disk reveals nothing — the text is unreadable without the key.
No lock on the door
Export every note and bookmark to JSON or Markdown whenever you like. Delete your account and it is gone for good — no quiet archive.
A note you cannot find again is just a thought you had once. A desk is the difference between writing things down and keeping them.
You do not need more notes. You need to read the ones you already wrote — in a form that makes the morning worth showing up for.
Before you sign up.
Is Slate really free?
Yes. Slate is public and free — register today and keep a desk at no cost, with no card. Paid plans may arrive later for heavier use, but the desk you start now stays free.
What happens to my notes?
They are private to your account and encrypted at rest. Slate does not read them, sell them, or use them to train anything. They are yours.
Do I need to know Markdown?
No. Write plainly. The editorial layout — the lead story, the columns, the typesetting — is applied for you. There is nothing to format.
Can I get my writing back out?
Always. Export every note and bookmark to JSON or Markdown whenever you like, and delete your account whenever you like. No lock-in.
Where does the AI come in?
In two places. Save a link and Slate drafts a short synthesis — “the desk read”. And search works by meaning: a search for “focus” finds your essay on attention even when it never uses the word. To do that, Slate builds a private search index — which sends note and bookmark text to an embeddings provider, used only to index your desk and never to train a model.
Is it finished?
Slate is young — version 0.1. It is stable enough for daily writing, and it improves most weeks. You are an early reader, not a beta tester.
Tomorrow’s edition is waiting to be written.
Create your desk and it opens with a handful of sample notes, so it feels lived-in from the first morning. Free, and yours.