Notes

Use Notes for scripts, research, transcripts and conversation excerpts. Notes belong to the workspace and support rich text, Markdown, source references and revision history. Saved content can be referenced by boards, workflows and agents. PDFs, Word files and slide decks don't live here: they enter the media library as document assets, and Save as note turns one into a note when you need it.

Getting things in#

These places can turn content into a note, and everything written this way carries its source:

From	What lands in the note
An answer in AI Studio	That answer, sourced back to the message
A sticky note on a board	The note text, sourced back to that board
Editor → Transcript	The whole transcript; with a selection, only the selected lines
Editor → Subtitles	The whole subtitle track; translations are written alongside the original
Save as note on a document asset	The parsed full text; the document's images enter the library at this point, sourced back to the original document
Save as note in a browser session's top bar	The page's main text (the page as you see it signed in) or the text selected on it, sourced to the page address and title; see Browser pool

The dialog can create a note or append to an existing one. Transcripts and subtitles add a choice of body shape:

• Prose — consecutive sentences join into paragraphs, with a break after a pause longer than 1.5 seconds. Pick this when the text is a draft you intend to rewrite.
• Quotes with timecodes — one quote block per line, followed by the asset name and time. Pick this when you want to check each line back against the video.

Both shapes share the same sources: provenance is a fact, and it does not change with layout.

Appending to a note someone else is editing does not interrupt them — the appended text merges into their current draft and they keep typing, with no conflict prompt.

Writing#

The body is a what-you-see editor. The left side of the top bar is all formatting, from left to right: the sidebar toggle (hide the note list and focus on writing) | paragraph style (body text, headings one through six) | bold, italic, strikethrough, highlight | bulleted, numbered and task lists | Insert ▾ (quote, code block, divider, reference a note, image), web link, table | undo, redo. The right side is about the document: save status · Markdown · AI assistant · favorite · more. When the window gets narrow nothing wraps: the insert, undo/redo, list and bold groups fold, in that order, into More formatting (the vertical ⋮) at the far right, while the paragraph style always stays.

Every button has a hover hint with its shortcut: bold ⌘B, italic ⌘I, strikethrough ⇧⌘S, highlight ⇧⌘H, the three lists ⇧⌘8 / ⇧⌘7 / ⇧⌘9, paragraph style ⌥⌘0–⌥⌘6, undo ⌘Z, redo ⇧⌘Z (Ctrl instead of ⌘ on Windows). A button you can't use says why, such as "Nothing to undo".

A few things worth calling out:

• Images can be pasted, dragged in, or picked from Insert; select one to edit its link and alt text in place.
• Tables: Insert table opens a grid (8 × 8 to start, growing toward 10 × 10 as you reach its edge). The cells from the top left to the one under the pointer light up, with "rows × columns" underneath; click to insert a table that size, header row first. Arrow keys move, Enter inserts, Esc closes. With the cursor inside a table the same button is Table, and opens add row, add column, delete row, delete column and delete table.
• Code blocks take a language, get syntax highlighting in both light and dark themes, and have a copy button. They stay valid Markdown and participate in undo.
• Highlight is stored as ==text== (the same notation as Obsidian and Typora), and can wrap bold and other formatting; typing ==text== or pasting it also turns into a highlight. Exported Markdown keeps the ==, and a literal == already in the text does not suddenly become a highlight.
• Type @ to reference another note. The reference pins the revision it was made against, but opens the latest content by default; use View referenced version to see the pinned one.
• Markdown is a toggle you can press: pressed shows the source (the formatting buttons fold away), pressed again goes back to editing.

The save status on the right of the top bar says where you stand: Saved / Saving… / Unsaved draft. Closing the page loses nothing — an unsaved draft stays on this device and comes back the next time you open the note.

If you hit a conflict#

When two people change the same part of the same note, you see This note has a newer version. Neither side is overwritten:

1. Press Retry save to try again, or
2. Press Load the latest version — it exports your draft as a .md file first, then pulls the server's copy.

So the worst case leaves you with an extra .md file, not with lost words.

Select a passage: the selection toolbar#

Select some text in the body and a toolbar floats above the selection (below it when the selection is near the top of the window):

• Formatting: bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code (⌘E), highlight, add a link (type the address in place) / remove a link; formatting already applied shows as pressed.
• AI actions (a menu): Polish, Rewrite, Expand, Shorten, Translate (into English when the selection contains Chinese, otherwise into Chinese), Summarize, Explain, Continue, each with a hover description. They run straight in the AI assistant (next section).
• Ask AI: opens the AI assistant with this passage and puts the cursor in the input, for a question of your own.
• Copy (plain text), turn into a bulleted list / to-dos.
• Quote in chat: attaches the passage to the AI assistant's input without sending it or taking the cursor.
• Read aloud: reads it in the voice you chose under Settings → Spoken replies, or the free Edge voice if you never chose one; the notice offers Stop reading or Save as audio (only that step makes an audio asset in the library). A paid voice is billed per character, exactly as when the assistant speaks a line in chat.
• Save to notes: opens the save dialog to make a new note or append to another one.
• Add to board: pick a board (the one you used last comes first, you can search, and a name that matches nothing creates a new board). The passage lands as a sticky note in an empty spot, covering nothing; under it, "From note “…”" leads back to this note and finds the passage. Open board in the notice takes you to that sticky.

The toolbar waits until the selection is made: nothing appears or jumps around while you drag, and it shows when you let go of the mouse (also when you let go outside the text). Extending the selection with Shift and the arrow keys, it stays out of the way between presses and shows when you release Shift. A select-all shows it right away.

It works from the keyboard too: Tab enters the toolbar, arrow keys and Home / End move, Esc closes it and returns to the text. In a very narrow window the toolbar keeps only Ask AI and More.

AI assistant#

AI assistant on the right of the top bar opens the same assistant panel as the editor and boards, and it knows which note you are looking at: every message carries this note's title and text (only the opening of a long one; it reads the rest in sections when it needs to), plus the passage you selected — shown as a small chip on the input, which you can remove. Docked, the panel takes a column whose left edge you can drag; when the window has no room it overlays the right side of the text instead. Whether it is open, docked or floating, and its width are remembered on this device. Each note has its own conversations: switch notes and the panel switches to that note's; with no note open, the panel continues AI Studio's conversation.

• Summaries, explanations, outlines are answered in the chat; the note is not touched.
• Changing the text (Polish, Rewrite, Expand, Shorten, Translate, Continue on the selection toolbar, or your own request such as "make this more conversational") is done passage by passage, behind a confirmation card that shows each change as original → new, removed text struck through and added text highlighted. Nothing changes until you approve, the change can be undone, and the old version stays in the revision history. If you edited that passage before it got there, the step fails instead of writing in the wrong place.
• A message sent with a selection shows an excerpt line in its bubble (the note title and the start of the passage), so you can tell later which passage "this" was; click it to go back to the note with the passage selected.

While the panel is open, text the agent appends directly (the kind that needs no confirmation card) shows up in the note within seconds.

Keeping it tidy#

The list on the left supports search (titles, body, tags) plus Favorites, Trash and Topic filters. Drag its right edge to resize it; the width is remembered. Leaving the page and coming back reopens the note you last had open in that workspace, and the All notes / Favorites / Trash tab stays where you left it.

Select notes turns on multi-select: hold Shift for a range, select the whole current list, then favorite, export Markdown, move to trash, restore or delete permanently in bulk. Right-clicking one note offers open, rename and duplicate.

Import Markdown (the import icon, an arrow pointing into a tray) sits in the list header and accepts .md / .markdown / .txt, up to 500 KB per file. Pick several at once, or drag files onto the Notes page: each file becomes a note and the last one opens. Dragging only images into the body still inserts them as images.

A note in the trash opens with a notice at the top offering Restore from trash and Delete permanently.

Delete permanently removes the note and all of its revisions, with no way back. Existing references stay where they are, but their source can no longer be opened.

Revision history#

Every change to the text is kept in the revision history. More → Version history opens a large dialog: versions grouped by day (Today, Yesterday, a date) on the left, the selected one on the right at reading width.

• Consecutive manual edits make one revision: one person typing in a row (pauses under 5 minutes, at most 30 minutes per revision) is kept as a single revision that autosave keeps updating. A pause over 5 minutes, another person, or an assistant change, restore or Save to note in between starts a new one. Each revision says how much changed, such as "+120 −30 chars" or "Title changed"; hover the time to see when it was written.
• Favorites, moving to trash, tags and topics don't create revisions, and restoring a revision brings back the title, text and sources only, leaving those properties as they are now. Merely opening a note that was imported or written through the API or a workflow (one that ends in a table, say) no longer autosaves an "Edited" revision with no visible change: the editor tidying up the structure doesn't count as an edit.
• Each entry says how it came about: Edited, Changed by the assistant, Saved to note, Restored from version N… Someone else's changes carry their name.
• Switch between Preview / Compare with current / Compare with previous on the right: removed text is struck through, added text is highlighted, long unchanged stretches fold away.
• The top entry is marked Current version. Restore this version asks first, then creates a new revision; every existing revision stays. Copy this version's content copies its Markdown text. Arrow keys move between versions in the list.

When you upgrade from an older version, the fragmentary revisions the old library saved on every autosave are merged by the rules above and renumbered without gaps; document items on boards, sources and links that pointed at old revision numbers are repointed, so nothing breaks. How each old revision came about is filled in wherever tasks, conversations and run records can tell; the rest are recorded as edits.

Sources and properties#

More → Sources and properties lists where this note came from, plus its topics and tags (both comma-separated). Excerpts saved from assets, chats or boards appear here automatically, and clicking one goes back to the original — asset excerpts carry their timecode with them.

Getting back out: canvas and workflows#

Infinite canvas#

A document item on a board references a note: select it and press Choose a note on the action bar (once a note is referenced it reads Choose another note); it pins that revision's content and shows v<revision> at the bottom. Connect it to a note, image, video or audio item and the content flows downstream as input. The bottom offers Update to latest revision and Open note. Ask AI to write on the action bar writes a new note from scratch (saved and referenced) or rewrites the referenced note as its next revision (the old one stays).

When the original is trashed or deleted, the node says Note unavailable instead of quietly passing an empty string downstream.

The other way round, Add to board on the selection toolbar puts a passage on a board as a sticky note that remembers which revision of which note it came from (see above).

Workflows#

The workflow Knowledge category has these nodes:

Node	What it does
Search notes	Searches titles, content, tags and topics; returns cited excerpts
Read note	Outputs the full Markdown and a source link; leave the revision empty for the latest, or pin one
Save as note	Saves text or upstream output as a new note, without overwriting existing ones
Document to Markdown	Turns a PDF / Word / slides / spreadsheet asset into Markdown text, optionally only some pages (see Documents)

Search notes returns excerpts rather than full text — connect it to Read note when you need the whole thing. That keeps a search across dozens of notes from blowing up the context.

Agent citations#

Notes and web sources in an agent's answer are clickable, and open the exact revision that was cited. What it searched and which version it used stay in the answer for you to check — you are not asked to trust that it remembered correctly.

Related#

• Creative boards — how a document item connects to generation items
• Documents — importing, reading and saving PDFs, Word files and slides as notes
• Visual workflows — where the knowledge nodes sit in a graph
• Editing and color — where transcripts and subtitles become notes
• AI Studio — saving excerpts from a conversation