How Mindnodes works
Every concept, and the exact steps for every action. Ordered the way the product is put together: a node first, then what it wears, then everything that hangs on one. The examples at the end walk whole jobs from beginning to end; every other page says exactly how one piece works.
Remember
The graph the whole product rests on: what a node is, the note or guide it carries, when something deserves a node of its own, and the relations that connect them.
The two labels a node wears — which part of your life it belongs to, and what kind of thing it is — and the properties that kind brings with it.
Write it down before you know where it belongs: the compose box saves what is on your mind to your inbox as a thought, and you turn it into a node when you are ready.
A mail, an event, a photo, a place and a signal are one kind of thing: something that arrived, queued in your Inbox, and hangs on the node you judged it onto.
How a thread arrives, reading and answering it, the drafts your second brain writes, and how to hang it on the client, project or person it is about.
How an event arrives, four ways to make one yourself, and how to hang it on the nodes it belongs to.
Attach anything to a node — from your camera roll, a drop, a paste or a URL.
Look up an address, or drop a pin where the world has none.
A source pushed into your inbox by something outside Mindnodes — a GitHub issue, a Sentry alert.
One set of nodes as a list, a board, a calendar, a map, a graph or a gallery — narrowed by filters, and kept as a tab on its page.
The handful of things you are carrying, kept in the sidebar under the compose box: the nodes you chose, and the ones a close deadline or a running block adds to them.
The way out of your own account: put a node on the web at its own address — anyone with the link can read it, and nobody can change it.
Think
Talk to your second brain about a node, an item, or nothing in particular.
What your second brain worked out and has not done: a change-set waiting for your yes, line by line.
The built-in reflexes, what they may do, and how to teach them.
What your second brain knows about you before you say anything — and how to correct it.
Give your second brain tools beyond Mindnodes, and give other assistants your Mindnodes.
Examples
Keep the articles, tools and references you stumble on, in a place that still makes sense six months later.
The label on the wine, the parking level, the screenshot you took for later — filed instead of lost in your camera roll.
One loop for your work: the to-do leaves your head in a second, earns its hour in the morning, and on Friday you read the week off your calendar.
Keep every dish you cook once, drop it on the evening you will cook it, and walk into the shop with the list already on your phone.
Bookings, places, times and the half-formed ideas about what to do — all under one thing you can open on the road.
The invitation with the half-familiar name becomes a meeting you walk into prepared — and leave with the notes and follow-up already filed.
Let your second brain read what came in overnight and hand you replies to confirm rather than mail to answer.
Who they are, what you last talked about, and everything that turned out to be connected to them.
The restaurant that was worth it, the client's office, the beach with the good light — on a map instead of somewhere in a note.
One thing to open when the project comes up, instead of four places to check first.
A list of what you meant to read that you can actually work through, and that admits what you never will.
Notes that connect to each other while you write them, so revising is reading rather than reconstructing.
Recipes, warranties, manuals, the wifi password at your parents' — the things you only need twice, exactly when you need them.
Search for what it was about, not what it was called, and save the search once you have it.
Pages marked Soon are the ones still to be written — they are in the tree so you can see what the whole thing covers.
