Write and manage Notes

Notes hold information that you or an agent writes. Use them for decisions, plans, preferences, project knowledge, and handoffs.

Notes are different from Items. A Note is editable. An Item is captured source material such as an article, video, email, or file. You can link an Item to a Note without changing the captured Item.

Create a Note

  1. Open Capture in Keep.
  2. Select Write.
  3. Enter a title.
  4. Write the Note in Markdown.
  5. Select Save note.

You can leave the title empty. Keep uses the first non-empty line as the title.

You can also create a Note with the CLI:

keep notes create --title "OAuth handoff" --body-file handoff.md

Edit and save a Note

Open Notes from the sidebar. Select a Note to edit it.

Keep saves changes after 30 seconds. Select Save changes to save sooner. You can also press Command+S.

Keep stores a recoverable draft in your browser while you edit. A failed save does not remove that draft.

The editor supports common Markdown shortcuts:

  • Command+B makes text bold.
  • Command+I makes text italic.
  • Command+Shift+X adds a strikethrough.
  • Command+K adds a link.

Use Markdown checkboxes for work that should appear on the Dashboard. Keep recognises open, in-progress, complete, and cancelled task markers.

Add properties

Open Properties above the editor. You can add these values:

  • Project connects the Note to a Project.
  • Kind describes the type of Note, such as handoff or decision.
  • State records a workflow state, such as open or closed.
  • Tags help you find related Notes.
  • Custom properties store other structured values.

The token count is read-only. Keep calculates it from the Note body with the o200k_base tokenizer. The editor also shows the line count and byte count.

Create a linked Note when you want to add your own thinking to captured source material.

  1. Open an Item in the Feed.
  2. Select Add linked note.
  3. Write the Note in Markdown.
  4. Select Create linked note.

The new Note stays connected to the Item. The Item remains unchanged. Agents can read the linked source, highlights, and recent Note history when they need more context.

The CLI can also attach an Item or highlight. A link can describe the source as source, evidence, example, inspiration, or annotation.

Find Notes

The Notes page has three views:

  • All notes shows every active Note.
  • Open handoffs shows Notes with the open state.
  • Agent edits shows Notes last changed by a connected agent.

Use Keep search to search Notes and Items together. Use this CLI command to search Notes only:

keep notes search "OAuth verification"

Review changes

Every saved change creates a revision. A revision records who made the change, which client they used, when it happened, and the supplied change summary.

  1. Open a Note.
  2. Select the revision count below Properties.
  3. Select a revision.
  4. Review the added and removed lines.

To restore an older version, select Restore this version. Keep creates a new revision from that version. It keeps the current version and the full history.

Resolve an edit conflict

Keep checks the current revision before it saves a change. This check protects work when two clients edit the same Note.

If another client saves first, Keep keeps your local draft and loads the latest saved revision. Select Use latest to discard the local changes. Select Save my version to save the local draft as a new revision.

CLI and API clients receive a revision conflict instead. Read the Note again. Then retry the change with the new revision number.

Archive a Note

  1. Open the Note.
  2. Open the Note actions menu.
  3. Select Archive note.
  4. Confirm the action.

Select Undo in the confirmation message to restore the Note at once. Archiving and restoring both create revisions.

Export Notes

Use the CLI to export all current and archived Notes:

keep notes export --output ./keep-notes.zip

The ZIP contains one Markdown file for each Note. The frontmatter contains the stable Note ID, revision, timestamps, archive state, and custom properties.

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