Frequently asked questions
Last updated 2026-10-14
The basics
What is MindMax?
MindMax is a desktop AI agent and workspace for macOS and Windows that reads, thinks and writes with you inside a folder you already own. It reads whole PDFs, books and Office files and answers with verbatim quotes you can click back to; it lays a question out as an AI mind map you expand branch by branch; and it drafts and revises documents, with every change to your text shown as a tracked change. Your notes, and the two hundred PDFs you read to write them, sit in one folder — where a single AI works across both. Tools you would otherwise stitch together each hold one half of that.
Is MindMax free?
The app is free. Reading, writing, search and your own folder cost nothing. You pay only for AI work — through a subscription, or with your own API key. There is no trial countdown: the free plan includes a small weekly AI allowance, paid plans add more, and with your own key there is no allowance at all.
Which platforms does MindMax run on?
MindMax runs on two desktop platforms: macOS, Apple silicon (M1 or newer); and Windows 10 or later, 64-bit, installed from the Microsoft Store or with the installer on the download page. There is no mobile app and no web version — it is a desktop application that works on a local folder, and that is a deliberate trade-off rather than a gap about to be closed. Because your files sit in an ordinary folder, any sync service you already use will carry them between machines.
How long does it take to get started?
About as long as it takes to open a folder. MindMax opens the folder you already have — nothing to import, no vector database to set up — so the first useful thing you can do is open a paper in it and ask a question. To use the AI you either sign in, which comes with a small weekly allowance, or paste an API key from a provider you already use.
Which languages does MindMax work in?
The MindMax interface is in English and Simplified Chinese, and your documents can be in any language. A document is read in the language it is written in, the AI answers in the language you write to it in, and quotes are kept in the original. Translating a document from one language to another is a feature of its own.
Can my team use MindMax together?
No. MindMax is a single-person desktop app: there is no shared workspace and no live co-editing. The folder is ordinary files, so you can share it through the sync service you already use, but two people editing the same note at the same time are not reconciled by MindMax.
Reading and asking
Which file formats can MindMax read?
PDFs, EPUB and Kindle books (.mobi and .azw3, as long as they are not DRM-protected), Word, PowerPoint, Excel, images and Markdown — all opened in place, out of the folder they are already in. A PowerPoint file is laid out as slides rather than flattened into text, a Kindle file is converted into a proper EPUB once and then behaves like any other book, and an image becomes searchable once it has been read. Scanned pages have no text until you recognise them, which is a step you start on purpose.
ChatGPT can already read PDFs. Why would I need MindMax?
Uploading a file starts a conversation that ends. Here the document is the thing you work in — annotations, quotes and notes stay in your folder and are still there next time.
Why should I trust the citations?
Every claim MindMax makes about a document carries the verbatim quote it rests on, and each quote is matched against the source text before you see it. A quote the model reworded slightly is replaced with the document’s own words; one that cannot be found is flagged in the answer rather than passed off as checked. Clicking a quote opens the page it came from, so checking a claim costs a click instead of a re-read.
Can I screenshot a chart and ask MindMax about it?
Yes — and boxing the chart inside the document works better than a screenshot. Drag a box around it and the question carries four things, not one: the picture, the verbatim text sitting under the box, the page or chapter it came from, and the document itself. So numbers and formulas are taken from the text rather than read off the image, the answer clicks back to the spot it came from, and a follow-up question still has the document to read. Where a region genuinely has no text under it — a scanned page, a pure graphic — the answer says the figure was read off the image and may be wrong.
Does MindMax work on scanned PDFs?
Yes, once the pages are recognised — and recognition is a step you start deliberately rather than something that happens silently in the background. Quality depends on the scan, and per-page quality is reported so you can see which pages came out badly instead of finding out later through a strange quote.
Can MindMax help me review someone else’s document?
Yes. Open the draft and start a review: MindMax reads the whole document, against a focus or a checklist you give it, and drafts comments on the exact passages, each marked major or minor, with a review memo for the author. You adopt the comments you agree with, in your own words, and export them as Word comments in a copy of the file — “name - reviewed.docx” beside the original, which is not changed. The copy can be made from Word, Markdown and plain-text files.
How does MindMax find things without a vector database?
There is no vector database behind the search. It finds material the way you would — by structure, by the words on the page, and by trying other wordings — so each answer traces to a passage you can open. The trade-off: a question phrased very differently from your files, or asked in another language, can miss.
Thinking, writing and translating
Is MindMax just a chat window on top of a model?
No. The main surface is not a chat box. It is your document, and a canvas you can expand a thought across. On the canvas — an AI mind map — you put a question, a claim or a document in the middle, and each branch comes back as a card holding a short argument you can question or push further on its own. The branches you keep can be saved as a note or handed to the writing side as an outline.
Will the AI change my writing without me seeing it?
No. Every AI edit to your existing text in MindMax arrives as a tracked change — deletions struck through, insertions highlighted — so anything without a mark is what you wrote, and nothing is written to the file until you accept it. A whole-document revision comes back in groups, each with a one-line reason, which you accept or reject separately. Text the AI adds rather than changes, such as a new note or an appended section, is written directly, and like everything else it lands in the document history.
Can I undo what the AI did?
Yes. MindMax keeps its own version history of the notes in your folder, separate from any Git or sync you use and with nothing to set up. Each version is labelled with who made it — you or the AI — and what kind of change it was; you can compare any version with the current text, and restoring one is itself recorded, so a restore can be undone too.
Can MindMax organise my notes for me?
Yes — MindMax quick notes work like an AI secretary for your notes. Say or type a thought in a note and the AI fixes the wording, files it under the right heading and turns things to do into tasks, without adding or dropping anything you said; corrections it is unsure of are listed for you to check. A Tidy whole note button reorganises the whole note when you press it, and every change arrives as a tracked change you accept.
Can MindMax write something long without contradicting itself?
That is what its long-form writing is built for. You approve the outline before drafting starts. As each section is finished, what it argued, which terms it defined and what it promised to come back to are written into ledgers, and every later section is drafted against them; a final review checks the whole draft for broken promises and claims that pull against each other. At book length you also judge a sample of the prose before the rest is written. It is for non-fiction — it does not track plot or characters.
Can I hand in what MindMax writes as a Word file?
Yes. Any document can be exported to Word or PDF with real headings, tables and editable Word equations, and each citation becomes a numbered superscript linked to a source entry that keeps the quoted passage. Export is one direction: the Markdown file in your folder stays the original, and AI changes you have not accepted are not included.
Can MindMax edit a Word file or a PDF I already have?
A Word file, yes — in place. @ the .docx in the assistant and say what should change; the edits come back in groups for you to review, and the ones you accept are written into the same file as Word tracked changes under your name, with its styles, numbering, header and footer left as they were. A PDF itself is never changed: its edits go into a Markdown file with the same name beside it, which you can export to PDF or Word, in MindMax’s layout rather than the original’s. A scanned PDF needs its text recognised first.
Can MindMax translate a whole book?
Yes. You start it once and it works through the document chapter by chapter. It first reads the book and builds a glossary of recurring terms, which you can correct before translation starts, and every chapter is then translated against that glossary. Progress is checkpointed, so closing the app mid-book resumes rather than restarts, and the translation lands as Markdown in your folder next to the original.
Does the assistant do things on its own?
It does the work on its own; it does not choose the direction on its own. A long job — reading a whole book, translating three hundred pages, drafting something book-length — runs to the end without being prompted step by step, but anything whose shape you would argue about comes to you first: the outline before a draft is written, the glossary before a translation starts. Rewrites of text you already have arrive as tracked changes you accept or reject. Nothing starts by itself, and closing the app stops the job — what was finished is already saved in your folder, and it carries on from there.
Your files and privacy
Will my documents leave my machine?
Not to open, read, annotate or search them — MindMax does all of that on your machine. When you use an AI feature, the content that piece of work needs, which can be a whole document, is sent to a model provider so the model can carry it out. Where it goes depends on your setup: with your own key for a cloud provider, requests go straight to that provider and not through us; with a model running on your own machine, they do not leave it at all. On the subscription path, requests pass through our gateway on their way to the provider; we keep usage records such as token counts, never the content of your documents, prompts or answers.
Can I keep some files away from the AI?
Yes. Right-click a file or folder in MindMax and choose Hide from AI: the AI will no longer search or read it on its own, while you still see it in the file tree and in search, labelled. If you hand it a hidden file yourself — by adding it to a conversation — it reads that file for that request.
Does MindMax work offline?
Partly. Opening, reading, annotating, editing and searching your documents in MindMax work without a connection. AI features need to reach a model provider — unless you point them at a model running on your own machine, in which case they work offline too, within what a small local model can do.
Does MindMax work with my Obsidian vault?
Yes. MindMax opens the folder you already have. Nothing is imported, nothing is converted, nothing is locked in — your notes stay plain Markdown on your own disk. Open the vault as a folder and [[wiki links]] resolve against its files as before, while Obsidian keeps working on the same folder. Canvas files are JSON Canvas in both apps, so they open either way. Community plugins are not loaded in this version — they keep running in Obsidian itself.
What happens to my files if I stop using MindMax?
They stay where they were. MindMax works on a folder you already own and writes ordinary files into it, so uninstalling the app does not take anything with it. You pay for AI compute, not for your files. Everything MindMax produces lives in your own folder and stays readable if you stop paying.
AI models, keys and cost
Which AI models does MindMax include?
One MindMax subscription reaches several model families rather than one, including GPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and MiMo. Different work suits different models, so MindMax picks a tier for the task and you can override it. You are not locked to one provider, and you do not need a separate subscription to each.
Can I use my own API key?
Every AI feature works on your own API key — the same tiers, the same tools, no account and no weekly cap. Point each kind of work at whichever model you want, including one running on your own machine. The subscription is there to save you the setup and the separate bills, not to unlock the app.
Which providers can I plug my own API key into?
15 providers come pre-filled in MindMax, so adding one is pasting a key rather than looking up an address: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini and the major Chinese providers among them, plus anything that speaks the OpenAI API. The model list is then fetched from the provider itself rather than read off a list we maintain, so this year's models are there on the day they ship.
Can I run MindMax against a model on my own machine?
Yes. Ollama and LM Studio are among the pre-filled providers and need no key at all — requests go to the endpoint on your own machine, and nothing about them reaches us. Be honest with yourself about the work, though: short questions about an open document are fine, while the long jobs — a book read chapter by chapter, three hundred pages translated, something book-length drafted — lean on long context and reliable tool calls, and a small local model will be slow at them or will not finish them.
Is any MindMax feature locked to the subscription?
No. The subscription is a way to pay for AI compute, not a licence level: with your own key every feature behaves the same way, there is no weekly allowance to run out of, and you do not need an account to use the app at all. What you give up is the convenience — you manage the keys, and the bill from each provider is yours.
Can I use my own key for some work and the subscription for the rest?
Yes. The MindMax subscription shows up in settings as one more provider, and each tier points at either it or one of your own. Credits are spent only on the work that goes through the subscription; everything else is billed by your provider. A tier you leave empty uses your own providers first and falls back to the subscription — if you are signed in — only when none of them fits.
If MindMax puts whole documents into the model, does that burn through my credits?
No more than it needs to. A document is only put in whole when it fits inside a fixed budget, and that block is cached between turns — so following up on the same document does not pay for it again. Anything larger is not force-fed to the model: it reads the structure first and pulls only the sections it needs. Opening, reading, searching and annotating your files spends nothing at all.