Write

Write from your own material — in the document, with a plan you can see

Say what you are writing and point at what you read. A plan appears at the top of a real document — what the piece should make the reader agree with, and under every heading the point, the approach and the passage it rests on. Change any line, then it writes section by section into the same file, asking you where only you know the facts.

Download See what the plan looks like →

From: A memo or a blog post to a thesis or a book
Lands as: Markdown in your folder · Word or PDF on export
Runs on: macOS (Apple silicon) · Windows
Price: Free app · AI plans from $10/mo, or your own key
AI: Included, or your own API key

A writing brief at the top of a blog post — Task, Reader should agree, Angle, Reader, Voice, Stance, Sources and Length filled in, status Writing 1/1 with a Stop button, a line listing what it still needs from the author — and the first paragraphs being written below it

Most AI writing hands you a finished-looking draft and leaves you to find out what it rests on. Which of your sources did it actually use? Is that figure from your notes, or did it sound right? Did it skip the part only you could have written, or fill it in? You read the whole thing to answer questions that should have been settled before a word was written. Here they are settled in the document first — and the document stays yours to edit while it writes.

The plan is in the document, and you can change any line of it

There is no separate outline to approve and no settings screen. The plan is ordinary text at the top of the file and under each heading, and what it says is what gets written.

A writing brief under the title: the task in your words, the one thing the reader should agree with by the end, the reader, the voice, your materials, where it may look for more, and a length. Every field is a line you can rewrite.
Under each heading, a plan card: the point this section makes, how it makes it, and the evidence — a named document followed by the first sentence of the passage it rests on, so you see what each section stands on before it is written.
Delete a line of evidence and the section will not use it; link another file and it must. Delete a card and that section is not written. Reorder the headings and that is the new order.
Short pieces are planned and written in one go. Papers, theses and books stop at the plan so you can work on it first — and any piece will, if you say “show me the outline first”.

Why our team decides slowly

Writing briefWrite it all ▾

TaskA memo for the leads on why decisions take us weeks

Reader should agreeWe are slow because nobody owns the call, not because of our tools

ReaderTeam leads, short on time

SourcesMy files + web

LengthAbout 2,000 words

Two kinds of delay

Most of the waiting is not spent working. It is spent waiting for someone to say yes…

Nine days, four sign-offs

To write

PointThe nine days went to waiting for a yes that nobody owned

HowWalk through the sign-up page change, sign-off by sign-off

Evidenceinterviews-03 · “Last week we changed the copy on the sign-up page, and it took nine days to ship.”

LengthAbout 500 words

Everything above is ordinary Markdown in the file. Change a line and the draft follows it.
Illustration, not a real run.

Rare

Where only you have the facts, it asks you instead of making them up

Results, figures, the client you worked with, what went wrong in the project — an AI that has to keep writing will produce these fluently and wrongly. This one has a third option besides writing and inventing.

When your material does not cover a fact only you can supply, the section gets a card at that spot: a plain question, an example of the shape of a good answer, and a place to answer — or @ a file.
Answer and press Write it in, and that one spot is written from what you gave. Or tell it to write around the gap with no invented specifics, or remove the card and write it yourself.
The rest of the section is still written, and needs the missing fact only where the card sits. Results sections of a paper go further: numbers written there must appear in your material, and any that do not are flagged.
A public fact it could not find is marked [To verify: …] rather than filled in. Those markers survive export, so a gap never quietly disappears.

A Needs your material card in the draft: a bold question asking for one recent moment where the author trusted the AI’s map over the territory, an example of a good answer, an empty Your answer line, and the buttons Write it in, @ Pick a file, I don’t have it — write around it, and I’ll write it

When it finishes, it reads the whole thing through

Writing section by section means section three cannot see section seven. So when the last section is written, it reads the whole piece once — for promises the introduction made and the body never kept, a step one section skipped that a later one relied on, the same point made twice, and length that does not match weight.

Sections it wrote in this run, and you have not touched, are fixed in place — at most four. The brief lists which ones and why, and Undo read-through puts the text back as it was.
Anything that was already yours comes back as tracked changes, grouped with a reason, so nothing you wrote is rewritten silently.
What only you can decide — the claim is stronger than the evidence, two directions both hold — arrives as comments on the draft rather than as edits.
You can run it again from the brief’s menu after you have changed things yourself.

A writing brief folded to one line — Blog post, 7 sections — and under it: Read-through revised 3 sections, each section title a link with its own undo, then Undo read-through and Undo this writing run; below the article title, a written section card offering Rewrite this section and Restore to plan card, and the opening paragraph with a footnote marker

A weekly update is not a thesis — pick what you are writing

The genre decides the structure, the voice, how sources are cited and which mistakes to avoid. Choose one on the brief, or leave it on Auto and it picks from your description.

Everyday: report or memo, proposal, work summary, blog post, how-to, reading notes. Academic: literature review, course paper, journal article. Long-form: thesis and nonfiction book, which become a folder with a file per chapter.
Your own genres sit in the same menu, under My writing skills. Start one from the closest built-in genre and describe how you write — or build it from pieces you have already written, below.

An empty document with a writing brief under the title and its genre menu open on Auto, grouped into Everyday (Report, Proposal, Work summary, Blog post, Tutorial, Reading notes), Academic (Literature review, Course paper, Journal article), Long-form (Thesis, Nonfiction book) and the author’s own, beside the Write it all button

Give it a piece you like, and it writes the new one the same way

A style is hard to describe and easy to point at. Name an article — one of yours, or one you admire — say what to take from it, and the new piece on your topic is written that way.

Write it in the brief the way you would say it: “a launch post just like [[last spring’s launch post]], about the new sync”. From your words it works out whether you want the form — the order of the parts, the headings, the length — or only the voice.
The model is not material. Nothing in it is cited and its facts are not reused: the new topic is written from the files and links you give for it, and what only you know is asked for.
A note, a PDF, a Word file or a web page can be the model. A long one is read for what you asked — a concrete account of its voice with a few passages quoted word for word, and its outline when you want the form.
Happy with the result? Right-click the piece, or several of your own, and choose Save as my genre…. The structure, the voice and the checks are drafted into a genre you read and edit before saving — then pick it for any topic.

A document titled MindMax Promo with a writing brief on Auto whose Task line reads “Write a promo article for MindMax, just like FunBlocks PPPP, about MindMax: @https://mindmax.me” — an earlier piece linked by name as the model and the product site linked as the material — beside the Outline it button

How a piece gets written

Say what you are writing
In the assistant (“a memo for the leads from these interviews”), or put a writing brief in an empty document and type the task. Pick a genre or let it choose.
It reads before it plans
Your named files first, or what in your folder fits the task; and, if the Sources line allows, a few web or paper searches. The plan follows what that material can actually support.
The plan appears in the file
The brief, then a heading and a plan card per section, streamed in as they are decided. Edit anything — the next section reads the latest version.
Sections are written in order
Each one reads everything written above it. Introductions and summaries are written last, from what the body actually says.
Gaps become questions
A card where only you have the fact; [To verify] where a public fact was not found. The rest is written regardless.
It reads it through
Once, over the whole piece. Fixes to what it just wrote go in place and can be undone; the rest are tracked changes and comments.
Export
The brief and plan cards are removed in Word and PDF. Footnotes come out as citations that still carry their quotes.

A thesis or a book is a folder, with a file per chapter

Past a certain size a piece needs a structure you can look at in one page. A long project is a folder: an overview with every chapter and the job it does, and a file for each chapter once you start it.

The overview holds the book’s brief and one heading per chapter, with a sentence on what that chapter is for and the sections under it. That page is where you argue with the structure of the whole thing.
A chapter file is created, and its sections planned, when you start that chapter — from what the earlier chapters actually say, not from a guess made on day one.
Each chapter’s brief says what it builds on and what it leads into. If an earlier chapter was misread, you see it there and correct the line before the chapter is written.
Write a chapter, or Write the whole book chapter after chapter. A read-through of the whole book at the end flags overlaps and contradictions between chapters as comments, for you to decide.

Why Teams Decide Slowly/

00-Overview.mdBook brief · every chapter and the job it does · the sections under each

01-Two kinds of delay.mdChapter brief: Builds on — nothing yet · Leads into — chapter 2’s “who owns the call”

02-Who owns the call.mdChapter brief: Builds on — “two kinds of delay” is defined, do not argue it again

03-Handing decisions downNot created yet — made, and planned, when you start this chapter

Each chapter is planned when you start it, from what the earlier chapters actually say.
Illustration, not a real run.

What else the writing does

Quotes from the passage it used

Each footnote carries the exact words of the paragraph the sentence relies on, collected in one Notes section at the end.

Your files first, then the web

A Sources line decides whether it may search the web or scholarly papers. Your files are used first; outside sources only fill gaps, and a paper known only by its abstract only supports what the abstract says.

One section at a time

Under any heading of your own, ⌘J → AI write this section drafts just that part from your sources, or fills in what it is still missing and leaves your text alone.

Keep editing while it writes

Only the section being written is locked. Change the brief or a later card and the next section reads it. Switching tabs does not stop it.

Stop, and pick up later

What is written stays. Press the button again and it carries on from the sections still waiting. Any written section can be restored to its plan card.

Next to what you are working on

A new piece is saved beside the document you have open, or in the folder you chose. It is marked as AI-drafted, so later writing never cites it as a source.

Coming from drafting in an AI chat

That is how most AI-assisted drafts get written today. Here is what changes — and the rows where a chat window is still the better tool.

Topic	An AI chatAsk for a draft, copy it out, ask again	In MindMax
What it is based on	You find out by reading the result.	Each section’s evidence is on its plan card before it is written.
Facts it does not have	Filled in, often plausibly.	A question at that spot, or a [To verify] marker.
Changing direction	Re-prompt and get a new draft.	Edit a line of the brief or a card; what is not written yet follows it.
Chapter nine and chapter two	You paste summaries back in.	Each chapter is planned from the earlier chapters’ actual text.
Writing like a piece you admire	Paste it in each time, or keep a style prompt in custom instructions.	Name it in the brief; or save it as a genre once and pick it from the menu.
Where it ends up	Copied out of a chat window.	A Markdown file in your folder, exportable to Word or PDF.
A paragraph or an email	Quicker — ask, copy, done.	Works, but a brief and a plan are overhead for something that short. Use the inline AI in the editor instead.

One part of a loop: read, think, write

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.

ReadRead and annotate the papers and books the piece rests on — the evidence on each plan card points back into them.
ThinkWork the argument out on a canvas first, then hand over the branch you settled on and it becomes the headings.
WriteThis pageTurn it into a memo, a paper or a book from your own material, and revise it as tracked changes.

All three work on the same folder of files — the one you already have →

Where it gets hard

The plan decides the ceiling
Most of the quality is set before drafting starts. A short piece goes from plan to prose without stopping, so if the result is off, the brief or a plan card is usually where to fix it — then restore the section and write it again.
Built for non-fiction
Arguments, explanations, reports, papers, books that make a case. It does not track characters, plot or a story’s timeline, so it is the wrong tool for a novel.
Checked quotes are not a fact-check
Every footnote quotes the passage it relies on, and you can open it. Whether that source is right is still your call — read the footnotes that matter.
It judges what your material covers
Deciding that a fact is missing is the model’s call. It may ask for something you already gave it (point to the file and continue), or, more rarely, miss a gap.
A model gets close, not identical
A named piece or a genre of your own brings the shape and the voice near; a reader who knows the author may still tell. One model piece also passes on its quirks — two or three give a steadier voice.
Length is a budget, not a contract
If a draft runs short it deepens the argument rather than padding; if it runs long it will not cut content just to hit a number.

Common questions

Do I have to approve an outline before it writes?

No. For a short piece it plans and writes straight through, and the plan stays in the document for you to change and rewrite from. Papers, theses and books stop at the plan so you can work on it first, and any piece will if you ask for the outline first.

Will it invent data, quotes or personal details?

It is built not to. Where a fact only you can supply is not in your material, it leaves a card at that spot asking for it. A public fact it could not find is marked to verify. Every footnote quotes the passage it relies on, and in results sections any number not found in your material is flagged.

Can I edit while it is writing?

Yes. Only the section being written is locked. Edit the brief, a later plan card or anything already written, and the next section reads your version.

How does a long piece stay consistent?

Sections are written in order, each reading everything above it, and introductions and conclusions are written last. In a book, each chapter is planned from the earlier chapters’ actual text, with what it builds on written in its brief. A read-through at the end checks the whole for promises not kept, repetition and skipped steps.

Does it search the web?

Only if the brief’s Sources line allows it, and the first time in a workspace it asks you. It sends search queries drafted from the topic, never the text of your files, and uses outside sources only where your files leave a gap.

Where does the document go?

Beside the document you are working on, or into the folder you chose. A thesis or book becomes a folder with an overview and one file per chapter. They are ordinary Markdown files you can open anywhere.

Can it write a new piece in the style of an article I give it?

Yes. Name the article in the brief or the assistant — “just like [[that post]]” — and say what to take from it: its form, or only its voice. A piece you name as a model decides how the new one is written — its shape and its voice — not what it says: nothing in the model is cited, and the facts come from the material you give for the new topic. No model is trained on your writing; the piece is read each time it is used.

Can it write in my style every time?

Save it as a genre of your own: right-click one or more pieces you wrote and choose Save as my genre…, or start from the closest built-in genre and describe how you write. You review the genre before it is saved, then pick it from the genre menu. It gets close, not identical.

Can it write fiction?

No. It is built for non-fiction that makes an argument or explains something. It does not track characters, plot or a story’s timeline.

Start with a plan you can argue with.

Download Pricing

Longer projects use more AI work — see pricing before committing a book.