Notesify Documentation

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Getting Started
3. The Editor
4. Iris AI & Agentic Tools
5. Active Study Tools (Quizzes & Flashcards)
6. Offline-First Architecture & Desktop App
7. Organisation
8. Search
9. Sharing Notes
10. Security & Authentication
11. Multi-Device & Conflict Safety
12. Performance
13. Self-Hosting

Introduction

Notesify is a focused writing environment with an AI assistant built in. The philosophy is simple: the editor stays quiet and out of your way, and Iris — the AI — only shows up when you invite it.

Under the hood, Notesify is a production-grade MERN stack application with multi-provider AI orchestration, optimistic concurrency control, and robust, secure authentication.

Live app: notesify.in

Getting Started

Create an account

Sign up with an email and password, or continue with Google. Google accounts are pre-verified via OIDC — no email confirmation step required. If you sign up with Google using an email that already has a local Notesify account, the two are automatically merged into one.

Email/password accounts require a one-time verification before you can sign in.

Your first note

Once logged in, click New Note in the sidebar. The editor opens immediately — start typing. Notesify auto-saves as you write, so there is no save button.

The Editor

Notesify's editor is built on TipTap (ProseMirror) — the same foundation used by Notion, Linear, and Loom. It is a rich-text editor that feels like writing in a document but stores structured content underneath.

Formatting

Markdown-style shortcuts work as you type:

• #, ##, ### for headings
• - or * for bullet lists
• 1. for numbered lists
• **bold**, _italic_
• ` for inline code, triple backtick for a code block

The toolbar at the top of the editor covers everything else: font size, text alignment, indentation, and highlights.

Code blocks

Language is auto-detected as you type — no need to specify it manually. Syntax highlighting applies immediately.

Tables

Insert a table from the toolbar. Tables are native markdown — they stay clean, resize correctly, and never break your structure when you edit them.

Images

Drag an image into the editor or paste it directly. It uploads automatically to Cloudinary and embeds inline. No manual hosting required.

Task lists

Create checkboxes with [ ] syntax or from the toolbar. Check them off inline without leaving the editor.

Automatic title

When you start writing a new note, Iris generates a meaningful title from your content automatically. Your note list stays organised without you having to name anything.

Iris AI & Agentic Tools

Iris is Notesify's context-aware AI assistant. It understands your active note, can research across your entire workspace, and only activates when invoked — never interrupting your writing flow.

Under the hood, Iris routes requests dynamically across specialized models configured in the multi-provider orchestrator:

Cascading fallbacks ensure near-zero AI downtime. This multi-tiered routing is completely seamless — you always interact with a single, unified Iris persona.

Agentic Workspace Tools

Unlike standard chat interfaces that only see the currently opened document, Iris in v1.3.2 functions as an agentic assistant with autonomous tool access:

• search_notes(query): When you ask a broad question ("Where did I write down the system architecture?"), Iris automatically queries your entire notes database to find candidate notes.
• get_note_content(noteId): Iris inspects the full text of relevant candidate notes before synthesizing a complete, citation-backed answer.
• create_note(title, content, tags): Iris can generate structured study guides, project roadmaps, or research summaries and save them directly as new notes in your library.

Inline Slash AI (/)

Type / on any blank line inside the editor to open the inline command menu. Choose from pre-configured actions (draft note, generate outline, explain concept, summarize) or type a custom prompt. Iris streams ghost-text directly into your note canvas, which you can accept with Tab or reject with Escape.

Interactive Mermaid Architecture Diagrams

Iris natively detects architectural flows, sequence diagrams, and class charts. Instead of outputting raw text, Iris renders high-resolution, zoomable Mermaid diagrams inline in your chat conversation, complete with dark-mode styling and node interaction.

Bubble menu (inline actions)

Select any text in the editor. A floating menu appears immediately above your selection with formatting options and AI actions. No shortcut or click required — selection is the trigger.

Available AI actions on selected text:

• Improve — rewrites the selection for clarity, grammar, and flow
• Summarize — condenses the selection into key points
• Rewrite — rephrases with different wording while preserving meaning
• Brainstorm — expands the selection into related ideas
• Continue — continues your thought from where the selection ends

Ghost text & inline suggestions

When you run an AI action (Improve, Continue, etc.), the result is injected into the editor as ghost text — visually distinct from your regular content. An AI Suggestion widget appears inline with two options:

• Accept — merges the suggestion into your document as normal text
• Reject — discards the suggestion entirely, restoring your original

Your document is never modified until you explicitly accept.

Chat panel

For longer conversations, questions, or research tasks, open the full Iris chat panel.

• Desktop: Click the Ask AI button in the top-right editor header
• Mobile: Tap the floating Ask AI button at the bottom of the screen

The chat panel slides in alongside the editor. Iris has full context of your active note and responds accordingly.

What you can do in chat:

• Ask questions about your note content or across your entire workspace
• Request rewrites, summaries, or expansions of entire sections
• Attach images for visual analysis or OCR
• Attach PDF files — Notesify parses them on the backend and injects the content into Iris's context
• Research topics in real time — Iris can browse documentation and URLs and return clean, usable answers

Streaming: Responses appear token by token in real time at 60 FPS. You can see Iris's reasoning process via a live Thinking indicator before the final answer arrives.

Conversation memory: Chat history is managed through an intelligent token-budget sliding window. Active history is maintained within an 8,000-token allowance; older messages that exceed this budget are automatically consolidated via a multi-provider background summarizer into a rolling technical context snapshot, preserving continuous context without hitting token limits or clipping verbose code.

AI suggestion caching

Improve, Summarize, and Grammar actions on identical text return cached results instantly. Repeated requests on the same content never make a redundant API call.

Active Study Tools (Quizzes & Flashcards)

Notesify bridges note-taking with active recall. Transform passive notes into interactive study sessions:

Spaced-Repetition Flashcards

• Generate flashcard decks directly from your document notes with a single click.
• Review decks with flip animations, rating your confidence to prioritize challenging concepts.
• Seamlessly synchronize review progress across devices.

AI-Generated MCQ Quizzes

• Automatically extract key concepts into multiple-choice quizzes with distractor options and instant explanations.
• Test retention after writing or studying long technical documents.

Offline-First Architecture & Desktop App

Notesify's Windows desktop application (and modern web client) is engineered with local-first reliability:

• Zero-Latency Local Workspace: Read, edit, and organize notes completely offline. Edits persist on your machine's disk without network lag.
• Ordered Mutation Queue: Offline actions (create, edit, delete, reorder) are queued in local persistent storage.
• Dual Reconciler: When your internet connection returns, Notesify's background synchronizer automatically drains the mutation queue and reconciles state with the cloud.
• Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC): Version-based hashing prevents stale updates from silently overwriting newer server changes, providing visual diff resolution if a true conflict arises.

Organisation

Folders

Create folders and sub-folders to any depth. Each folder shows a live note count. Sub-folders load lazily — the tree does not fetch everything upfront.

Favorites

Star any note to pin it. Starred notes appear at the top of your note list for quick access.

Trash

Deleted notes go to Trash, not permanent deletion. Restore a note in one click, or permanently delete it when you are ready. The editor is never a destructive environment by default.

Search

In-panel search

A search bar at the top of the notes panel filters your current folder view in real time.

Command palette

Open the global command palette to search across all your notes, archived notes, and folder names simultaneously. Results include contextual snippets and real-time match highlighting. Full keyboard navigation — no mouse required.

Notesify's search is hybrid: full-text indexing provides high-relevance ranked results for complete words. If your query contains partial words or special characters, the system falls back to indexed regex search automatically. You will never hit a zero-result page.

Sharing Notes

Notes can be shared via a secure, self-expiring link. Shared links are cached globally — recipients outside your account get near-instant load times regardless of location.

Sharing controls (set expiry, revoke access) are available from the editor header.

Security & Authentication

Notesify implements authentication patterns typically found in financial applications, not note-taking apps.

JWT with refresh token rotation

Every session uses a short-lived access token paired with a refresh token. On each session renewal, the refresh token is rotated — a new one is issued and the old one is invalidated immediately. This limits the damage window if a token is ever compromised.

Reuse detection

If an old (already-rotated) refresh token is replayed — which would indicate token theft — Notesify immediately revokes all active sessions for that account. Every device is signed out.

Session limits

A maximum of 5 active sessions are allowed per account. Signing in on a sixth device signs out the oldest session automatically.

Email verification

New accounts require email verification before sign-in. Existing legacy accounts are auto-trusted on login. Google OAuth accounts are pre-verified via OIDC — no extra step needed.

Password security

Passwords are hashed with bcrypt before storage. Plain-text passwords are never stored or logged anywhere.

Multi-Device & Conflict Safety

Notesify is safe to have open on multiple devices simultaneously. Edits never silently overwrite each other.

Every note carries a version number. When you save, your request includes the version you last saw. If another device saved a newer version in the meantime, the server returns a conflict response instead of applying your change blindly. The frontend surfaces this gracefully — your content is never lost.

This pattern is called Optimistic Concurrency Control (OCC). It is the same approach used in production database systems to handle concurrent writes safely.

Performance

Notesify's backend serves note and folder requests through a self-healing Redis cache (Upstash). Most read requests return in under 10ms. Cache invalidation happens automatically on every write — you never see stale data.

If a cache drift occurs (an expected key is missing), the system re-fetches from MongoDB and re-seeds the cache without any manual intervention.

Measured frontend performance

Self-Hosting

Notesify can be run locally. You will need:

• Node.js v18+
• A MongoDB connection string
• An Upstash Redis account
• A Cloudinary account
• API keys for Groq, Google Gemini, and OpenRouter

Full setup instructions are available in the GitHub repository.

Notesify is currently in public preview. Free to use, no credit card required.