We built the MindMax online document editor because writing a few lines should not require a decision. Word is heavy. Obsidian asks you to learn a system first. Notion is a workspace builder when all you wanted was a page. The web editor sits in that gap: open a browser tab and write, with Markdown underneath, a real document on the way out, and AI at your cursor.

This post is the reasoning behind it: what existing tools get wrong for light use, what we decided to build instead, and what it does today.

An AI thinking canvas is a board where one question becomes branches you open one at a time. Each branch is a card holding a reason rather than a keyword; a hub card says what the branches add up to; whatever fails to convince is cut. MindMax Think is a free AI thinking canvas that runs in your browser.

Two shapes usually stand in for thinking with a machine, and both lose something. A chat answer is a column of text — the second question scrolls the first one away, so comparing two angles means holding both in your head. A blank mind map keeps everything in view, but you fill it in yourself, and most people fill it with the three or four moves they always reach for.

MindMax v1.3 removes the friction between your documents and AI. Until now, asking questions meant having an entire workspace folder open and explicitly pulling a document into the right-hand chat. v1.3 makes every document immediately conversational, lets you open standalone files without a project, adds instant actions to every document image, and introduces three lightweight web apps so you can write, think and read in any browser.

What is in it​

• Document chat for every file. The right panel now belongs directly to whichever document you have open — Markdown notes, PDFs, EPUBs, slides, data files, canvases, and images. Ask "what does this section argue?" or "tighten this paragraph", and the assistant answers with full awareness of that specific file. No need to @ files or manually add chips.
• Launchpad as the Workspace Agent. When you want to ask across your entire library rather than one document, the Launchpad and the left-rail agent provide a dedicated conversation space. The division is clean: document questions stay beside the document; broad inquiries across all notes happen on the Launchpad.
• Open single files without a workspace. You no longer need to create or pick a workspace folder just to read a paper or review a draft. Open any Markdown, PDF, EPUB or PPTX file directly from Finder or Explorer, or drag it onto the welcome screen. Reading guides, OCR, citations and document chat work immediately.
• Image hover toolbar. Move your cursor over any picture in the Markdown editor or in reading view (including figures in PDFs and slides) to reveal an action toolbar. Ask the AI about the image with one click, zoom in, convert it to a note, or transcribe it into text inserted below the picture as a tracked revision. You can also send the image straight to a canvas.
• MindMax Write online editor. A zero-install browser document editor at mindmax.me/write. Paste AI responses from ChatGPT or Claude without breaking math formulas, tables, or Mermaid diagrams. Edit with inline AI and tracked revisions, then export cleanly to native Word (.docx with real OMML equations), PDF, or image cards.
• MindMax Think online canvas. A structured AI thinking canvas at mindmax.me/think that applies proven consulting and analytical methods (MECE, premise audits, SCAMPER, steelman arguments). Ideas expand as connected cards that converge into outlines, which you can hand off to Write with a single click.
• MindMax Read in the browser. A web reader at mindmax.me/read that unpacks chapter structures, provides reading guides, and answers questions with verifiable page citations.
• Shareable card pages. Publish long notes or briefs into responsive, swipeable card pages hosted at cards.mindmax.me. Readers get a clean mobile reading deck where every card links back to its verified source quote, while links remain permanent even after you update edits.
• Two-column CJK paper reading. Academic papers in two-column layouts now read column-by-column without mixing lines across columns. Footnotes, figures, and inline formulas are parsed faithfully without being mistaken for tables, accompanied by an AI math recognition shortcut.

Known rough edges​

• Single-file reviews and backlinks. Opening a file outside a workspace disables workspace-wide backlinks and mentions, since there is no surrounding index of files. If you want full cross-linking, open its folder.
• Web app offline storage. The web versions store drafts locally in your browser's IndexedDB. Clearing browser data or using private browsing windows removes local drafts unless you export them or log in.
• Image toolbars on touch devices. On tablets and touchscreens, image hover toolbars appear on tap rather than hover, which can take an extra tap to dismiss.

Where to start​

Try the new document chat by opening any note or PDF and typing in the right panel. To use MindMax on the web without installing, try MindMax Write or MindMax Think. Already using the desktop app: the update will download automatically — restart when prompted to switch to v1.3.0.

MindMax starts with an editor because knowledge work rarely begins as a polished question. It begins as a phrase, a contradiction, or a thought you are still trying to make sense of. A document is where that rough idea can become context, a plan and eventually a finished piece.

A chat box is excellent when you already know what to ask. But if every piece of work must first become a prompt — and every useful answer then has to be moved into a document — the interface makes you organize the work twice. We built MindMax around a different premise: open a page, write, and bring AI to the work already there.

Good feedback on a draft depends on three things you control: how narrow the question is, how little the reviewer has to do before they can comment, and whether each comment comes back attached to the sentence it is about. Get those right and one round of comments turns into a second draft in an evening, instead of a week of back-and-forth.

A thesis chapter gets the best feedback when your supervisor knows what you want from this round, can comment without any setup, and gets back a second draft that shows what you did with each point. The first two shorten their part; the third shortens the next round, which is where most of the time on a thesis actually goes.

MindMax v1.2.2 is about the comments that matter most and that MindMax could not reach before: the ones from people who do not use it. Request review sends a draft as a link, and what your supervisor, editor or client says about it comes back onto the passages, ready to revise from.

What is in it​

• Request review. In a Markdown document, choose Request review… from the comments panel menu. You get a link to send however you like. Your reviewer opens it in any browser, phone included, with no account and nothing to install, selects a sentence and comments, asks a question, or suggests the wording they would use.
• Their comments land in your comments panel. On the passages they are about, tagged with the reviewer's name, with an External filter to see only theirs. Revise from them like your own: each group of edits names the comment it answers.
• They see what you did. Reply, mark a comment done, or Decline it with a reason. Their page shows “Author replied”, “Changed as suggested” or “Author kept it as is”.
• Rounds on the same link. After revising, Send new round. The link opens the new version, and reviewers can switch to See changes for what moved and how each earlier comment was handled.
• You decide how long. Open for 7, 14 or 30 days, extendable. End the review to close comments, or withdraw the link to delete the online copy and its comments at once.
• Highlights in five colours. Yellow, green, blue, pink and purple, on Markdown notes, PDFs and ebooks alike. Name a colour for what it means to you — “evidence”, “to check” — and the AI reads it that way when it summarises or reviews your highlights. In a Markdown file yellow stays ==; the other colours are written as ordinary <mark> tags, so the file still opens anywhere.

Known rough edges​

• Markdown only. PDFs, ebooks and Word files cannot be sent for review yet.
• It needs an account. A free one is enough, with one open review at a time; paid plans can have ten. This is the one feature that keeps a copy of a document on our servers — what is stored and for how long.

Where to start​

Request review shows what both sides see; requesting review walks through it step by step. Already using MindMax: the update will offer itself — accept it and restart.

MindMax is a desktop workspace for knowledge work, on macOS and Windows. You open a folder you already have — PDFs, books, Word files, notes — and an AI agent reads, thinks and writes with you inside it. Every answer quotes the page it came from, and every edit it makes to your writing waits for you to accept it.

I built it because programmers have had a home for their work for decades, and the rest of us still do ours across five windows and a chat tab.

MindMax v1.2.0 is one change more than anything else: AI writing was rebuilt so that the document you are writing is also where you steer it. The old writing flow is gone; everything below replaces it.

What is in it​

• The plan is in the document. Starting a piece puts a writing brief at the top of the document — the task, who it is for, what they should agree with, the angle, the voice, the sources — and a card under every heading with that section's point and the passage it rests on. Change a line and that is what gets written. Before, the plan lived in a separate view you approved once and then lost sight of.
• An outline first, unless you say otherwise. A new piece stops at the plan so you can argue with it, then Write it all drafts it section by section. Say “just write it” and it goes straight through.
• Where only you know the facts, it asks. Your results, your figures, what happened on the project: missing from your material, they become a card at that spot asking for them — answer it, @ a file, let it write around the gap, or write it yourself. A public fact it could not find is marked to verify.
• A read-through at the end. Section three cannot see section seven while it is written, so the whole draft is read once when it is done. What changed is listed with the reason, and each change can be undone on its own.
• Write one section. With the cursor under a heading, ⌘J writes just that section from its card. Section cards stay above the text, folded, so you can rewrite a section later from the same plan.
• Genres, and your own. Pick what you are writing — report, proposal, thesis chapter, column and more — and the structure, voice and citation style follow. Your own genres sit in the same menu, built from how you describe your writing or from pieces you have already written.
• Write like an example. Name a piece to write like, and it takes the shape and voice from it while every fact comes from the material you give for the new topic. How it works.
• Knowledge base is now “workspace”. The folder you open is called a workspace across the app, the docs and the site. Nothing about your files changes.
• Smaller things. Edit a note's title in place at the top of the editor, cleaner code blocks and tooltips, and footnotes that open in the same preview as citations.

Known rough edges​

• Long pieces take a while. Sections are written one after another, with the read-through after. A long piece can take many minutes; you can keep working in other files meanwhile.
• Unsigned installers outside the Microsoft Store still need the one-time step in the installation guide.

Where to start​

New to writing in MindMax: writing with a brief, or the tour in Introducing MindMax. Already using it: the update will offer itself — accept it and restart.

To get AI to write in your style, show it a piece written that way instead of describing the style. Name one or two articles that do what you want, say what to take from them — the structure, or only the voice — and give the new topic its own material. Then save the result as a reusable style, so you never paste the example in again.

Most people try the opposite first: a paragraph of adjectives in a prompt. It is the reason so much "in my voice" output still sounds like every other AI draft.