what it is
åsecond is your personal workspace and warehouse: notes, documents, drawings and the work in progress, all in one place that is yours. It is a second brain, a prosthetic for memory, built to fit the way your brain works. It files nothing on you, links what belongs together, and brings it back when it matters, including when you return to the place you left it.
a studio-owned build
- Capture it the way it arrives
- Type it, say it or draw it, with no folder to choose. åsecond says what kind of thought it is (an idea, an open loop, a moment or a feeling), links it to what you already hold, and tells you what it did. Write [[links]] of your own and åsecond adds the ones it finds by similarity, shown as a constellation of what connects to what.
- A warehouse for everything you think with
- Not just notes. Keep documents, images, models and any other file in real folders, and search them alongside your thoughts in one search. Ask your åsecond about a file the way you would ask about a note.
- Spatially aware, across every feature
- Every capture knows where it happened, and place runs through the whole app: the map, the brain, recall and triggers. Pin a note, a drawing or a markup to a spot and it waits there; draw on the camera, by pencil or with your fingertip tracked in the air, and lock it in place to see it again when you stand there. Your location is used on the phone and never sent to the studio.
- Draw it, then run it
- Infinote is the drawing notebook inside åsecond, with brushes that answer to speed, pressure and the tilt of a pencil. Select some ink and it reads it: handwriting becomes text, a sketch gets described, and it suggests workflows to run over what you drew. A drawn tool can be built into a small working page on your toolbox shelf; change the drawing, rebuild, and the same tool sharpens.
- Flow: the canvas becomes a workflow
- Send a page to Flow and it arrives wired: the page as the source, a workflow, and your brain as the output. Add steps from there: search your notes, have Claude work over them, judge between options, build a page, or turn the sketch into a finished picture, restyle it, lift it into a 3D model or set it moving. The result comes back into your brain as a new thought, or as a file to hand off.
- Triggers: actions that fire on their own
- Arrive at a place, reach a time, write a new link or a tag, and a trigger can run a workflow over the notes nearby, open a chat, or send you a note. Open loops that have gone quiet come back before you lose them, and a question in plain words is answered from your own notes. When something interrupts you, park what you were doing and pick it up later.
- Native MCP and an open API
- åsecond is a Model Context Protocol server, so Claude (on claude.ai, Claude Desktop or Claude Code) can plug straight into your brain with a key you can revoke at any time, and an HTTP API lets your own tools read from it and add to it. The whole brain can go to a GitHub repository you choose as a single commit.
- The brain the entrées apps sync to
- åsecond is the AI-native data layer for the studio’s apps. süschef sends a kitchen session in as linked notes, and its shopping list lives behind the same entrées account. eyecüe, crepcheck, pacioli and süschef send the times you listen, save, spend and eat to Vitals: when, never what. Each one is off until you link it.
- Never locked in
- Without an account, everything stays on your device. Nothing goes to an AI service until you say yes. The whole brain exports as an Obsidian-compatible zip of markdown files, one per thought.
åsecond is for people whose thoughts arrive faster than any filing system can hold them.
the build
from capture to recall
A note is easy to save and easy to lose. The work is getting back to it with enough context to use it.
how it works
Capture and authored links
The note carries its text and metadata. Explicit [[links]] are authored connections; similarity suggestions are a separate layer, not a replacement for the links a person writes.
A portable document
The vault builder serializes thoughts into Markdown files and linked artifacts, assigns collision-safe paths, then packages the tree as a ZIP. The vault reader parses documents and preserves frontmatter fields it does not own when updating location, links or tags.
the design choice
Keep capture, drawing and authored links in one brain, while allowing the notes to leave as a Markdown vault.
limits
Model-assisted reading needs consent and an account. A drawing surface and a retrieval system have different jobs; neither guarantees that an inferred connection is right.
what the studio contributed
- The note model, capture and recall interaction, vault mapping and drawing interface are studio-authored application work.
- The choice to keep authored links and exported documents legible is part of the product design.
dependencies & boundaries
- React and the drawing/rendering libraries provide interface and rendering primitives; fflate packages the ZIP.
- Hosted account storage and model-assisted interpretation are third-party services. Consent and account requirements remain in place.
the evidence
- Source inspected
- The vault writer and reader contain the Markdown serialization and path-collision handling described here. A local test of the real vault reader confirms that updating tags preserves authored prose, an explicit link and unfamiliar metadata.
- UI verification still pending
- The current browser build passes CI. Capture-to-recall, pencil behaviour and a full export round-trip have not been demonstrated in this site review environment; no screenshot is substituted from a mockup.
next experiment
- Capture three invented notes and write an explicit [[link]].
- Draw a small plan in Infinote, select the ink and inspect the available actions.
- Find the note again; distinguish an authored link from a suggested connection.
- Export the vault and open the Markdown outside the app.
Use invented data. This is a demonstration path, not a report of customer outcomes.
Private build. Pressure and tilt depend on the input device; browser emulation cannot prove pencil behaviour.
ask for a walkthrough →how it differs
Obsidian
what Obsidian does well
Free, private and flexible. Notes are plain markdown files on your own device, with links between them, a graph of how they connect, and thousands of community plugins. You can shape it into almost any system you like.
where åsecond differs
Obsidian rewards people who enjoy building their own system. åsecond does the organising behind you: it tags each thought, links by similarity as well as by the links you write, and brings things back by time and place. It exports an Obsidian-compatible vault, so you can move between the two. Pick Obsidian if you want full control of your files and your setup, and an app you can install today.
Notion
what Notion does well
A workspace for teams: everything in one shared system of record, answers with citations, and AI agents that keep work moving.
where åsecond differs
Notion is built for a team’s shared work. åsecond is personal: one person’s thoughts, captured as they arrive and returned by place, time and connection. Pick Notion when the notes belong to a team and need to live in one shared place.
Goodnotes
what Goodnotes does well
Made for handwriting on a tablet. It turns handwriting into text, searches across handwriting and sketches, and runs on iPad and iPhone, Mac, Windows, Android and the web.
where åsecond differs
Infinote is a drawing canvas first, with brushes that answer to pressure and tilt, and what it reads joins the same brain as everything else you keep. Pick Goodnotes for handwritten notebooks on an iPad, today.
Krea
what Krea does well
A generative studio: a rough sketch is rendered as a photorealistic image in real time as you draw, with a node editor for chaining models, 3D from text or images, and a run of video models. Free to start.
where åsecond differs
åsecond is a second brain first. A drawing is a thought among your thoughts: Flow can turn it into a picture, a 3D model or a short film, but the same canvas also runs workflows over your own notes, fires from a place or a time, and keeps what it makes in your brain. Pick Krea when the image is the job and you want it live as you draw.
questions
is there a second brain app for ADHD?
åsecond was designed as working-memory and executive-function support. You capture without choosing a folder first, park what you were doing when you are interrupted and pick it back up, and open loops come back before they go cold. It is a workspace, not a treatment or a medical device. It isn't open to the public yet; write to tomspanx@entrees.live to ask.
is there an app that organises my thinking for me?
That is the idea behind åsecond. Each thought is tagged as it arrives (an idea, an open loop, a moment, a feeling), linked to similar thoughts and to anything you link by hand, and shown in a constellation of what connects to what. You can ask it questions in plain words. The AI tagging runs only with an account and your permission; everything else keeps working without it. Not open to the public yet.
is there an app that reminds me of something when I get to a place?
åsecond can pin a thought to a place and bring it back when you return, and you can set a trigger that runs when you arrive somewhere. Your location is used on the phone and never sent to the studio. åsecond isn’t open to the public yet. If you need this today, the Reminders app on an iPhone can remind you when you arrive at or leave a place.
what is an alternative to Obsidian that organises itself?
åsecond keeps what makes Obsidian easy to leave, markdown and links, and does the filing for you. On export it writes a whole Obsidian-compatible vault, one markdown file per thought with its frontmatter, so your thoughts can leave with you. Obsidian is the better choice if you like building your own system: it is free and you can install it today, which åsecond is not yet.
is there an iPad notebook that reads my handwriting?
Infinote, the notebook inside åsecond, reads handwriting when you ask. Select the ink and Claude reads it back as text, or describes it if it is a drawing, with suggestions for what to run over it. Reading uses AI, so it needs an account and your permission. There is no iPad app yet: on an iPad it runs in the browser, and it isn’t open to the public. Goodnotes is the established pick for handwritten notebooks on an iPad today.
where does åsecond keep my notes?
Without an account, on your device, and nowhere else. With an entrées account they are stored in Australia so they can sync, and only your account can read them. Nothing goes to an AI service until you allow it, and there are no ads, analytics or tracking. The full policy is at entrees.studio/privacy/asecond.
where it stands
status behind the door
behind the studio door for now. write to tomspanx@entrees.live to ask.