# MindMax blog

URL: https://mindmax.me/blog/page/6/
Last verified: 2026-11-11

> Product notes, changelog and how we think about working through documents.

## MindMax blog

## [What we are building, and what we are not](https://mindmax.me/blog/what-mindmax-is/)

August 27, 2026 · 3 min read

[The MindMax team](https://mindmax.me/about/)

Building MindMax

MindMax is a desktop app for macOS and Windows that reads, thinks and writes with you inside a folder
you already own. Answers about your documents carry verbatim quotes you can click back to the page,
and every AI edit to your writing arrives as a tracked change you accept or reject.

There are a lot of tools now that will read a PDF and talk to you about it. We built a different
shape of thing, and it is worth being clear about why.

**Tags:**

- [Notes](https://mindmax.me/blog/tags/notes/)
- [Local-first](https://mindmax.me/blog/tags/local-first/)

[Read more](https://mindmax.me/blog/what-mindmax-is/)

## [v0.9.0 — public beta](https://mindmax.me/blog/v0-9-0/)

August 27, 2026 · 2 min read

[The MindMax team](https://mindmax.me/about/)

Building MindMax

note

This is the release note for v0.9.0 and describes that build. For what changed since, see
[v1.0](https://mindmax.me/blog/v1-0/) and the [changelog](https://mindmax.me/blog/tags/changelog/).

The first public beta build.

## What is in it[​](https://mindmax.me/#what-is-in-it)

- **Reading.** PDFs, EPUBs, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Markdown open from a folder you choose.
Annotations anchor to the real position in the document and are stored alongside it.

- **Region questions.** Drag a box around a chart or table and ask about just that part of the
page — useful when a paper stops making sense at a figure rather than at a paragraph.

- **Checkable answers.** Questions about a document come back with verbatim quotes that link to
the page they came from. Quotes that do not match the source are dropped rather than shown.

- **Canvas.** 37 built-in AI Skills across six groups, for taking one question and working it over
from several directions.

- **Long-form writing.** Outline approval before drafting, an argument ledger across chapters, and
revisions presented as marked-up changes.

## Known rough edges[​](https://mindmax.me/#known-rough-edges)

- Builds are not signed yet, so both macOS and Windows will warn on first open. The
[installation guide](https://mindmax.me/docs/getting-started/installation/) walks through it.

- Multi-column PDFs with interleaved figures are still the hardest extraction case; quotes from
those pages are worth clicking through.

- No mobile app, no web version. Not planned.

## Where to start[​](https://mindmax.me/#where-to-start)

[Understand a paper in about 30 minutes](https://mindmax.me/use-cases/understand-a-paper-fast/) is a good place to
find out whether this is for you.

**Tags:**

- [Changelog](https://mindmax.me/blog/tags/changelog/)
- [Release](https://mindmax.me/blog/tags/release/)