Brainstead Download

Brainstead for Mac

Everything on your mind.
In one place.

Tasks, notes and a wiki that writes itself, all in one folder of plain markdown.

Download for Mac See how it works
Brainstead's Today screen: overdue, due, deferred and waiting tasks, a capture box and where you left off

Your tasks live in your notes. Your notes build your wiki. And your assistant knows all of it.

Getting Things Done

A calm system
for a busy mind.

Start with today.

What's overdue, what's due and who you're waiting on, on one screen. Every task is a - [ ] line in a note you already have.

Clear your Inbox.

Everything you capture lands in one place, emails and chats too. Turn each one into a task, a note or nothing, in a click.

See every project.

Projects gather their tasks, notes and next actions, grouped by area of your life.

Review the week.

A guided weekly review walks you through it, step by step, so nothing slips.

Today The Inbox with a captured email open Projects grouped by area The weekly review

Notes

Write the way
you already do.

Read in View, write in Edit, and move between them in a click.

A meeting note in View The same note in Edit

The wiki

A wiki that writes itself.
And shows its work.

Bring in what you've collected, and your assistant turns it into wiki pages you can trust.

A wiki page about Orbit App, with the pages that link to it
A claim traced back to the quote in its source
Every claimquoted from its source
Every quotechecked against the original
Every sourcea dated entry on each page it touches
Knowledge health: the checks, the issues needing a decision, and pages by type and tag

Knowledge health

A wiki that keeps itself honest.

Every time the vault changes, Brainstead checks the wiki: missing pages, broken links, stale facts, duplicates and claims with no source. Each day it looks for pages that contradict each other.

The fixes with one right answer take one click. The rest you can hand to your assistant.

The graph of wiki pages around Orbit App

See how it all connects.

People, projects and ideas, linked as you write.

Ask

Ask your vault anything.

Chat with the assistant you already have on your Mac. It answers from your notes, drafts replies and makes changes for you. It can do almost anything you can do in the app.

  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • Copilot
  • Antigravity
Ask: a chat about what changed on Orbit App

Changes

Your assistant does the work.
You keep the last word.

Every change an assistant makes is listed with its diff, its reason and the quotes it rests on. Revert any of it, even after you've edited since.

Changes: a change held for you, with why it was held and the quote it rests on

There's more.

The small things that make it feel like home.

Everything, one keystroke away.

Press ⌘K to find any note, page, task, screen or command.

⌘K: find a note, go to a screen or run a command

Always in the menu bar.

See what's due, capture a task and check on runs without opening the window.

The menu-bar window

Capture as fast as you think.

Dates, contexts and links become part of the task as you type.

Listen to any page.

Brainstead reads notes aloud in your Mac's voices, lighting up each word as it goes.

A wiki page being read aloud, with the player bar

Your day, summed up.

Daily and weekly summaries, written for you.

Meetings into notes.

A Teams transcript becomes a note from your template.

Help on every screen.

Press ? anywhere for that screen's help.

Notes that do more.

Task queries, tables from your notes, diagrams and maths, right in the page. Templates turn a routine into one click.

  • Tasks queries
  • Dataview
  • Templater
  • Mermaid diagrams
  • KaTeX maths
  • Callouts
  • Wikilinks
  • Highlights

Works from Terminal, too.

Add Brainstead's tools to Claude Code, Codex or Copilot once, and use them from any folder.

~ % 
Added brainstead to user config

Yours, on your terms.

Plain markdown.

Your vault is a folder of files. Open it in any other editor, today or in twenty years.

No account.

Nothing to sign up for. Sync your vault with iCloud Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox, or don't.

Read-only first.

Brainstead opens your vault without touching it, until you say it may.

Risky changes wait for you.

Anything that adds code or edits a template is held until you accept it.

Never reformats.

Saving changes only what you changed, and won't overwrite a file edited elsewhere.

Free, and open.

Free software under the GPL. Read the code, change it, share it.

Questions.

Is Brainstead a GTD app?

Yes. It follows Getting Things Done: an Inbox to clarify, next actions by context, projects, waiting for, someday/maybe and a guided weekly review. Every task is a line in one of your markdown notes.

Does it work with the markdown notes I already have?

Yes. Point it at any folder of markdown notes. It understands wikilinks, tags, task lines with dates, Tasks and Dataview queries and Templater templates, and it opens your folder read-only until you say it may make changes.

Which AI assistants does it use?

The ones already on your Mac: Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot and Antigravity, with your own accounts. Brainstead doesn't need one to be useful, and every change an assistant makes is listed with Revert.

Where is my data kept?

In your vault, a folder on your Mac. Brainstead has no account and no server. When you use an assistant, what it reads is sent to that assistant's provider, as it would be anywhere else.

Can it bring in my email and Teams chats?

Yes. Browser extensions for Outlook and Teams capture a thread, chat or meeting transcript in one click. It lands in your Inbox and can be turned into wiki pages or a meeting note.

Is it free? Does it run on Windows?

It's free and open source under the GNU GPL. For now it's Mac only, for Apple silicon and macOS 14 or later.

Make room to think.

Point it at your notes, or start a new vault.

Download for Mac View on GitHub

Apple silicon (M1 or later), macOS 14 or later.