Getting started with Thoute: read this first đź‘‹

General
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Welcome! Whether you just got beta access or you are still kicking the tires, this is the fastest way to get the hang of Thoute. Read it once, top to bottom, in about five minutes, and you will know enough to make it your own.

What Thoute actually is

Thoute is a hierarchical outliner, in the spirit of Workflowy or Logseq, for everything you know. You write in nestable bullets, and from there it does a few things most outliners don’t:

  • Encrypted with zero knowledge. Your vault is encrypted on your device with a key our servers never see. (More on what that means for you below. It matters.)
  • It ingests almost anything. Drop in a PDF, a Word doc, an email, an image, or a web page, and Thoute reads the contents, so they are searchable right next to your notes.
  • Everything stays connected. Blocks reference each other, backlinks are automatic, and tags become live feeds.
  • Steerable AI, only if you want it. When you bring in Thoute AI, you choose exactly what it sees. Off by default.

The one idea that makes it all click: everything is a block. A note, a task, a heading, a PDF you dropped in are all blocks. A block can nest under another, link from anywhere, and show up in several places at once.

Your first five minutes

You will land in the Journal, your daily page. Don’t overthink it. Just start typing.

  1. Type a thought and press Enter to start a new bullet. Tab nests it under the line above; Shift+Tab pulls it back out. That is 90% of the app right there.
  2. Make a task: type /task at the start of a line (or just / to see every block type: Note, Task, Decision, Question, Event, Claim, Evidence). You get a checkbox, and Cmd+Enter toggles it done.
  3. Tag something: type # then a word, like #reading, #idea, or #work. Tags become filterable feeds later.
  4. Link to another block: type (( and start searching. Pick a block and it embeds inline as a clickable chip, and that block now knows it was linked. The backlink is created for you automatically.

That is the whole loop: capture, structure, connect.

Journal versus Library

  • Journal is for capture: today’s thoughts, meeting notes, the idea that hit you on a walk. Each entry carries its date, and it is built to be fast and out of your way.
  • Library is for the things that outlive the day, your durable outline. When something in the journal deserves to stick around, move it into the Library.

Capture loosely in the Journal, then promote what matters into the Library. You don’t have to file anything perfectly, because search and links will find it.

The rest of the sidebar

  • Tasks shows every /task in your vault, grouped by Overdue, Today, In Progress, Open, Scheduled, Blocked, Hold, and Done. You never collect them; they surface here on their own.
  • Explore offers lenses across your whole vault on the same content: Tags, Graph, Attachments, Timeline, and Published (anything you have shared to the web).
  • Flows are optional AI pipelines you wire yourself (more below).
  • Settings holds vault management, export, and the switch that turns AI on.

Bring in your stuff

Just drag a file onto the page: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, .eml email, image, text or Markdown, audio, or video. Thoute extracts the text and indexes it, so a long PDF you dropped in last month is searchable alongside your notes.

Pasting a link gives you options: insert it as a link, clip the whole web page into your vault, or paste it as plain text. (YouTube links become an embedded video on their own.) There is also a browser Web Clipper extension if you live on the web.

Find anything

  • Cmd+K opens the jump palette: fuzzy search across pages, blocks, and tags. It is the fastest way to get anywhere.
  • Zoom into any branch with Cmd+., back out with Cmd+,, and up to the top with Cmd+'. Zooming lets you focus on one slice of a big outline.

Shortcuts worth memorizing

  • Tab and Shift+Tab: indent and outdent
  • Enter: new bullet. Shift+Enter: child note
  • Cmd+Enter: toggle a task done
  • Cmd+B, Cmd+I, Cmd+U: bold, italic, underline
  • Alt+Shift+↑/↓: move a bullet up or down
  • Cmd+Z and Cmd+Shift+Z: undo and redo
  • Cmd+K: jump palette. Cmd+?: the full shortcut list

AI, on your terms

AI is off by default, and you turn it on per vault (Settings, then Cloud AI). Once enabled:

  • /ask drops an AI prompt right in your outline, and you pick exactly what context it sees: specific tags, specific blocks. It only ever sees what you point it at, never your whole vault.
  • Flows let you wire a small, repeatable pipeline: gather context, run an agent, then land the result back in your vault.

You can also ask questions about any attachment, like “summarize this PDF,” from its detail panel.

One important thing about privacy

Thoute works with zero knowledge: your vault is encrypted on your device, and we never see your password or your data. That is the whole point, but it has one consequence worth saying plainly:

We cannot reset or recover your encryption password. If you lose it, your data is unrecoverable, by us or by anyone. Pick a strong password you won’t forget, and consider keeping it in a password manager.

You can export your whole vault anytime (Markdown, OPML, HTML, or plain text) from Settings. Your data is always yours to take with you.

Now it is your turn

That is everything you need to start. The best way to learn it is to spend ten minutes dumping real thoughts into the Journal and following where the links and tags take you.

Something confusing, or not working the way you expected? Reply here. That is exactly what this forum is for, and your questions make both the app and this guide better.

Welcome to Thoute. :brain: