How to use Slap Notes.

00 First run

Slap Notes opens on a welcome note that doubles as these docs. There's no account step and no setup wizard — the vault already exists and the first note is already yours to edit. Break it, rewrite it, or delete it; Ctrl + Z undoes anything.

01 Blocks & the slash menu

Every line is a block. On a new line, type / to open the block menu: text, headings, lists, to-dos, quote, callout, code, image, video, divider.

Or skip the menu and type the markdown instead — the block converts the moment you hit space. Every trigger is in the reference on the left, and they're the ones you already know: # for a heading, - for a bullet, [] for a to-do.

Hover any block and drag the grip handle on its left to reorder it.

02 Text styles

Select text and a floating toolbar appears with bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, highlight, inline code and links.

The raw markers work too, if you'd rather not lift your hands off the keyboard — **bold**, *italic* and the rest are listed under Text markers on the left.

03 Wiki links & the Cluster Brain

Type [[ to link a note. An autocomplete suggests notes you already have and offers to create the ones you don't — so you can link to a note before you've written it, then fill it in later.

Those links build the Cluster Brain. Open the graph from the network icon in the top bar to see every note and every connection at once. Each note also lists its backlinks at the bottom, so a note always knows who's citing it.

A fresh vault ships with a few notes already linked together — Research Hub, Ideas, Project: Launch and AI Research — so the graph has something to show you on day one.

04 Tags

Drop a #tag anywhere in a note and it renders as a pill. Click one — in the note or in the sidebar — to search every note that uses it. Tags cut across the graph when you'd rather query than wander.

05 Math & code

Inline math renders live between dollar signs: $E = mc^2$, or something longer like $\sum_{i=1}^{n} i = \frac{n(n+1)}{2}$.

Code blocks get syntax highlighting by language:

// code blocks get syntax highlighting
function slap(idea) {
  return idea.connect().toCluster();
}

06 Images & video

Paste or drag an image or video straight into a note, or use /image and /video from the slash menu. Media is stored locally alongside your notes and is included in your JSON backup and your vault export — nothing is uploaded anywhere.

07 AI Research

The sparkles icon in the top bar opens the research agent. It reads your Cluster Brain — your notes and how they link — then answers questions about what you've written, summarises the current page, finds connections you'd missed, or drafts new notes you can insert with one click.

08 Find, focus & navigate

Ctrl + K searches every note by title and content. Ctrl + Shift + F finds and replaces across the note. Ctrl + . toggles focus mode, which hides everything but the page.

Outline jumps between headings in a long note, and Today opens today's daily note, creating it if it doesn't exist yet.

Click the icon to the left of any title to give that page an emoji.

09 Own your data

Everything is local-first, and leaving is a first-class feature rather than an afterthought. The Download menu in the top bar gives you four ways out:

·· Menus

Every shortcut in the reference on the left also appears in the native menu bar, which Alt reveals. These menu items have no shortcut and live only there, or in the top bar:

• View — Toggle Sidebar, Outline, Cluster Brain, AI Research.
• File — Export This Note, Export Vault, Back Up Everything, Restore from Backup.
• Help — Open Notes Folder, Check for Updates, Report an Issue, Copy Diagnostics, About Slap Notes.

·· Where your files live

Notes are stored on your device and mirrored to plain JSON you can read, diff or back up with any tool you already use. Help → Open Notes Folder opens this directory in your file manager.

The app's own vault is authoritative: workspace.json is read back only when browser storage is empty, so a stale mirror can't undo a deletion or a restore on the next launch.