About iXnote

Why I Built It

I built iXnote because I needed it, and what I needed was context.

I sit in a lot of meetings, and the same problem came up every time. I am dyslexic. Like a lot of dyslexics I hold the big picture easily, it is the details that slip: the figure someone gave last time, the name, the single fact the conversation now turns on. I needed my notes to hand those back to me fast, while the discussion was still live. So I would have them open, Obsidian usually, searching and surfing links to find the one detail before the moment passed. At any real scale, no linear notes app I tried could do it. The detail was in there, buried in long-form notes that were mostly padding, and a buried detail is no use to anyone. I did not need the big picture. I had that. I needed the nuggets, not the fluff, and I needed them in the moment.

The more I learned about graph databases, the more I felt they were the right foundation. They are built to hold context: one thing connected to another, connected to another. But the interface was the problem. It had to be faster. Faster to fill in, yes, but above all faster at finding the exact piece of context I needed in the moment I needed it.

Then came the insight that made iXnote. Context is never still. It shifts with every conversation, every meeting, every new thing you learn. Mind maps are wonderful at showing context, but they are static, a fixed picture of a moment that has already moved on. So what if they were not static? What if the picture moved with you? That is iXnote. Dynamic context.

Context was very nearly the name, in fact. iXnote started life called Context, until I gave up trying to find a decent domain for it. The name went. The idea stayed, and it is still the whole point. Context is all you need.

What It Is

iXnote is small cards, each one no bigger than a tweet, connected to the cards around them, with all the empty space taken out. A card is the nugget, not the fluff: one detail, the size of an index card. You jot a card. You connect it. And because every card sits inside the picture its connections make, you never read a card on its own, you read it in its context. Tap any card and that context opens around it. Tap a card inside that, and the picture moves again. The context is always the one you are standing in.

How I Use It

I have used iXnote every day for five years. I do not take it into meetings to record what was said, AI transcription does that well enough now. I take it in for context, to be sharper and more useful while I am still in the room, with the right picture in front of me the moment I need it. It sits open on my desk all day, helping me think.

These days it does the reaching for me. With FollowAlong, iXnote sits beside me as people talk and builds my context as the conversation happens, surfacing the cards that matter so they are ready before I have to go looking. It never makes the connections for me, and it never does the thinking. That part stays mine. Its job is to make sure the right context is in front of me when it counts.

Why Publish Now?

Because it looks unlike any other software, people see me using it, at work, at conferences, travelling, and they ask what it is. Over the years plenty have asked if they could use it too. So here it is.

Will it disappear? Startups fold and their software vanishes with them, and I cannot promise iXnote will still be here in ten years. But I think the odds are good, because sharing it costs me almost nothing. No servers, no running costs. I will keep refining it for myself even if I am the only person using it, exactly as I have for the past five years.

Say Hi

I love hearing how other people use iXnote. If you got this far, drop me a note on the Contact page.