Documentation

How notes are organized

brainlog has exactly three levels: Folders contain Sections, and Sections contain Pages. A page is a markdown document — everything you write is stored as plain text and remains exportable at any time.

Tasks are checkboxes, not a database

Write a checkbox in any page and it shows up in that section's and folder's task list, board and due view:

- [ ] Send the quarterly report @due(2026-07-20) @assigned(alice)
- [/] Draft the intro section
- [x] Book the venue

- [ ] todo · - [/] doing · - [x] done — the three board columns. Checking a box or dragging a card rewrites that line in the page; there is no hidden task table it can drift away from what you wrote.

Boards are a region of a page, not a new object

Type + Board in the editor and three columns appear inline. The columns are the headings, so renaming one renames the heading and the two can never drift apart:

<!-- board -->
## Backlog
- [ ] Rewrite the pricing page
## Done
- [x] Book the venue
<!-- /board -->

No delimiters, no board — however many headings a note has, an ordinary note with ## Pros and ## Cons stays an ordinary note. The delimiters are HTML comments, so the file still reads as plain markdown everywhere else it's opened.

Due dates and assignees

@due(2026-07-20) and @assigned(name) are part of the task line itself. The Due view groups open tasks into overdue, today, this week and later, and @assigned matches the names of the folder's members.

Sharing and exporting

• Share links: any page or section can be published as a read-only page, with an optional expiration date. Links can be revoked at any time.
• Invitations: folder owners invite collaborators by email; everyone in a folder can edit its pages together in real time.
• Export: any folder downloads as a zip of plain .md files, mirroring its Folder/Section/Page structure.

Encrypted folders

A folder can be created as end-to-end encrypted: check Encrypted when creating it, then choose a passphrase the first time you open one of its pages. Page content is encrypted and decrypted in your browser — the server stores only ciphertext, so the operator cannot read those notes. Page titles and the folder/section structure stay visible.

This is a deliberate trade. Inside an encrypted folder there are:

• No task, board or due views — the server cannot see checkbox lines it cannot read.
• No full-text search inside page content (titles remain searchable).
• No share links — public share pages are rendered by the server, which has nothing readable to render.
• No agent access — encrypted folders are invisible to the MCP connection.
• No live co-editing — collaborators still share the folder, but they need the passphrase (give it to them yourself, outside brainlog) and see each other's changes on save, not keystroke by keystroke.
• No recovery — the passphrase never reaches the server, so it cannot be reset. Losing it means losing those notes.

Normal folders keep every feature; use encryption only where the privacy is worth more than the tooling.

Connecting an AI agent

Each account can generate a token that lets AI tools — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT and other MCP clients — read and write the same notes: create pages, edit markdown, move board cards. The connection cannot delete anything. Setup instructions live in Settings → Connect an agent after signing in.