MindSiftZoom in
One click on a bullet hides everything else: only this branch remains, and the breadcrumb bar at the top leads back. A note with 500 bullets feels like one with ten.
Self-hosted · Open source · one container
Thoughts have branches.
MindSift is an outliner: every thought is a bullet, every bullet can hold sub-bullets, as deep as you like. You collapse branches, zoom into one and write together with others at the same time, without overwriting each other.
1Starting in a moment …
Enter new bullet
Tab / ⇧ Tab indent & outdent
/ commands
Alt ⇧ ↑↓ move
Click on • to zoom
The workspace
A document is a page.
An outliner is a tree.
Structure emerges as you write, not before. What belongs together, you indent. What you don’t care about right now, you fold away. And when a branch grows too big, it simply becomes a note of its own.
Slash commands
/todo, /h1–/h3, /code, /callout, /link, /image, /audio, /diktat: every bullet becomes what it should be, without your hands leaving the keyboard.
Links & backlinks
With [[Note]] you connect thoughts across the whole workspace. Below every note you see who points to it, and one click jumps straight to the bullet.
Hashtags that gather
Write #backup anywhere. MindSift collects every occurrence on a tag page of its own, grouped by note, with room for your own thoughts on it.
To-dos from every note
Check boxes stay in their context and still end up collected in one overview. If you want, a to-do becomes a proper task with a due date, synced both ways.
Extract branches, merge notes
/extract turns a branch and its sub-bullets into a note of its own and leaves a link behind. The other way round, drag one note onto another and the two become one. Both can be undone.
Journal with calendar
Drag & drop whole branches
Images & voice notes
Dictation with your own Whisper
Link previews
Full-text search with Ctrl K
Undo across 200 steps
Folders & favourites
Markdown export for Obsidian
Obsidian import
Zoom
Five levels deep.
And you only see what matters.
Notes grow. Instead of scrolling, you click a bullet: everything else disappears, and this branch becomes the whole page. The breadcrumb bar shows where you are, one click on it takes you back.
Paste
Text in, tree done.
Paste an outline from an email, a chat or a Markdown file: headings, lists, indentation and check boxes become real bullets you can collapse, move and zoom into.
Collaboration
One big document.
Everyone in their own branch.
Ben has zoomed into his part of the test setup, Anna has the whole document open. Whoever writes in a bullet holds it for a moment. Everyone else sees a lock with a name and keeps working, live.
📡 Weather station › Radio & powerzoomed in
Radio & power
📡 Weather station
📡 Weather station – test setup
Try it with two people in the demo ↗
01
One lock per bullet
Not the whole note is blocked, only the one bullet someone is typing in. Everything else stays free.
02
Conflict copy, not data loss
If two people did change the same bullet, say because one was offline, a marked copy appears with “Accept” or “Discard”. Nothing is ever silently overwritten.
03
Offline first
Every change lands in the browser first and then goes to the server. Without a connection you just keep writing, the rest is sent later.
04
Works behind any proxy
If a corporate proxy blocks WebSockets, MindSift takes the next route:
WebSocketSSELong pollingevery 3 s
Finding things
Hundreds of bullets.
The one you need, instantly.
Search across everything
Ctrl K searches titles and every single bullet in all notes, tasks and lists, shared ones included. A hit opens the note right at the matching bullet.
Tasks
A check box in the note.
A card on the board.
One click turns any to-do in a note into a proper task with a due date, a priority and a place on the Kanban board. It stays connected to its check box: check mark, title and subtasks sync both ways.
Moving checklist
01
Both ways
Check off, rename, add subtasks: whatever you change in the note shows up in the task, and the other way round. “Open in note” jumps straight to the check box.
02
From task to note
If a task turns out bigger than expected, “Expand into note” makes a note out of it, with the subtasks as check boxes. The task stays on the board and connected to the note.
03
All to-dos in one place
Even check boxes that aren’t tasks of their own are gathered from every note in the to-do overview, filterable by folder. Checking one off there checks it off in the note.
04
Due dates that speak up
Recurring tasks, alarms when something is due and a daily summary by email, Discord, your own webhook or push.
Speak instead of typing
Dictate without your voice leaving the server.
Put a Whisper container next to MindSift, and speech recognition runs on your own hardware. No Google, no Apple, no Microsoft in between, just a free Whisper model in your network.
/diktatturns a bullet into a microphone. You speak, the text grows live and lands in the bullet.- Hold plus on your phone: speak, let go, and the thought is in Quick Dump.
/audioattaches voice notes to a note. Transcribing them takes one tap, later too.
🌱 Garden 2027
Potatoes in sacks again, worked well
🎙Phone or browser
→
Your server
MindSift
⇄
Whisper
Google · Apple · Microsoft not involved
01
Only text comes back
MindSift passes the recording on to your Whisper server and gets the text back. The recording itself is neither stored nor logged along the way.
02
One block in the compose file
Uncomment the prepared whisper block, set STT_URL, done. MindSift downloads the model itself on first start.
03
Fast or accurate
faster-whisper-small needs about 1 GB of RAM, large-v3-turbo about 2 GB and recognises better. Runs on the CPU, no graphics card needed.
04
Your call
Without your own Whisper, MindSift uses the browser’s speech recognition. That’s convenient, but the recording then goes to Google, Microsoft or Apple.
AI assistants
Your AI. A local one, if you like.
MindSift speaks MCP, the common language of AI assistants. Any AI that speaks it can read your tasks, create new ones, check them off, keep lists and, if you allow it, notes too. If the model runs on your own hardware, nothing leaves your network. Claude and ChatGPT work just as well, of course.
Due today
Groceries
01
Any AI that speaks MCP
Claude Code, Codex, Claude Desktop, Cursor or your own agent with a model running at your place. claude.ai and ChatGPT connect by signing in, no key needed.
02
Permissions per key
Every connection gets only what it needs: read, create or change tasks or lists, fill the inbox. Each one can be switched on its own, and MCP can be turned off entirely.
03
Notes only if you want
Notes are a permission of their own, with reading and creating kept apart. An AI may then write new notes, but never rewrite your existing ones.
04
Visible who did what
Whatever an AI creates or changes carries a permanent badge with the name of its key. With a timestamp, in case you want to know exactly.
Quick Dump & Triage
For the little things in between.
Milk, the dentist, that thing with the router that came to you while cooking: into the input bar it goes, typed or spoken, without thinking about where. Later you go through the stack card by card. Most of it gets thrown out, some becomes a task, and if you learned something, a note.
⚡ Collected today
The app around it
Notes are the centre.
Everything else is right there.
Tasks with Kanban, shared shopping lists, a journal and an input bar for whatever comes to mind on the go. On the computer and as an app on your phone.
Workspace
Folders and favourites on the left, the note on the right. Headings, callouts, checklists and code all sit as bullets in the same tree.
- Share notes and whole folders, as editor or reader
- Hashtags in the sidebar, with counts
- Trash with restore
Journal
One outliner per day. The calendar shows on which days you wrote something, the entries are listed one below the other.
- Hashtags and links work like in any note
- Shareable, for example as a joint building diary
Tasks & Kanban
As a list or as a board with columns you set up yourself. With priorities, due dates, subtasks and progress bars.
- Recurring tasks
- Daily summary by email, Discord, webhook or push
- Share task lists and watch tasks
Shared lists
Shopping lists for the whole family. Checking something off shows up for everyone instantly. With #chilled after an item, the list sorts itself by aisle.
- Quantities and categories
- Share with users or groups
Quick Dump & Triage
The input bar at the top takes whatever comes to mind in between, typed or spoken. Later you sort the stack card by card: as a task, into a note or a list, or away with it.
- Keyboard shortcuts on the computer, swipe gestures on the phone
- Sharing from other apps lands straight in the inbox
As an app on your phone
MindSift can be installed as an app, straight from the browser, without an app store. With its own navigation, large tap targets and push notifications.
- Hold the plus button and start talking
- Shows up in the phone’s share menu
- Works offline too
Look
Five colour families, each light and dark.
Classic, Fjord, Terracotta, Polarized and Suri. Plus round or square corners and an accent colour of your own, set per device.
No lock-in.
The whole workspace goes out as an Obsidian-compatible Markdown archive, with folders, check boxes and attachments. An Obsidian vault comes in just the same, with a preview of what will be created first.
Self-hosting
Your server.
Your data.
One container
Web server, API, interface and database in one image. No Postgres, no Redis, no zoo.
One SQLite file
All content lives in one file, images and voice notes next to it. Backup means: copy a folder.
No telemetry
No third-party services, fonts and icons are bundled. Speech recognition, if you want it, with your own Whisper container.
Leave any time
The whole workspace as an Obsidian-compatible Markdown archive. And you can come in from Obsidian just the same.
# creates ./mindsift, generates a JWT_SECRET and starts the container
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mindsift-app/mindsift/dev/install.sh | bashMindSift then runs on http://localhost:8080. All settings are in .env, each with an explanation.
services:
mindsift:
image: ghcr.io/mindsift-app/mindsift:stable
restart: unless-stopped
ports: ["8080:8080"]
volumes: ["./data:/data"]
environment:
- JWT_SECRET=a-long-random-value
- BASE_URL=https://mindsift.example.com
- TZ=Europe/Berlindocker compose up -d, done. :stable only gets tagged releases, :latest every new version.
services:
mindsift:
image: ghcr.io/mindsift-app/mindsift:stable
restart: unless-stopped
ports: ["8080:8080"]
volumes: ["./data:/data"]
environment:
- JWT_SECRET=a-long-random-value
- STT_URL=http://whisper:8000
whisper:
image: ghcr.io/speaches-ai/speaches:0.8.3-cpu
restart: unless-stopped
volumes: ["./whisper:/home/ubuntu/.cache/huggingface/hub"]
environment:
- WHISPER__COMPUTE_TYPE=int8First run mkdir -p whisper && sudo chown 1000:1000 whisper. Whisper needs no port to the outside, only MindSift talks to it.
Try it
The real app, no installation.
Everything is unlocked on the demo instance: workspace, tasks, lists, triage. Signing in takes one click, without a username or password.
Tip: Open the demo twice side by side, once normally and once in a private window with the other account. Then open the shared note and write in both windows at the same time.
Open the demo ↗
The demo resets every 20 minutes.