Getting Started

Your first 5 minutes in CoachKeeper, from signup to a captured idea that lives on tomorrow's calendar.

Why this app exists

Notes apps capture. Task managers list. Calendars block time. CoachKeeper is built on a stubborn observation: a captured idea that never gets executed is wasted thought.

So three connected entities live in one workspace:

• Notes — rich text for ideas, meetings, reading highlights. Anything that needs room to think.
• Todos — structured tasks with status, checklist, time estimates, tags. A task carries its own deadline and its own place on the calendar.
• Events — meetings and outside commitments. The things someone else put in your day.

A coach watches all three at once. It sees what you’re staring at, knows what’s in your backlog, reads your real availability. The whole product is built to shorten the path from “I should…” to a real block on a real day.

Sign up

CoachKeeper is currently invite-only during its private beta — an invite code is required to create an account, even when signing up with Google or GitHub. Head to coachkeeper.com to get started:

• Email: register with your email, password, and invite code, then check your inbox for a verification link — click it before you can sign in.
• Google or GitHub: one-click sign-up with either provider. You’ll still be asked for an invite code first, since it’s new-account creation that’s gated, not the sign-in method.

Existing accounts are never affected by the invite gate — it only applies to first-time sign-ups. Once you’re in, you’ll land on a tabbed workspace with six areas:

Each tab remembers its state — scroll position, active filters, what you were editing. Switch freely without losing your place.

On a desktop-sized window you can also put two tabs side by side: drag one tab onto another and they bind into a split group — the tab you dropped on keeps its place and takes the main pane, the dragged one docks to its right. Drag a member back onto the strip’s empty space to unbind it. Each group only shows while its own tab is active, so several can sit dormant in the strip.

A guided tour walks you through each area on your first visit. You can replay it any time from Settings — or just press Cmd/Ctrl+H to jump straight to it.

Your first 5 minutes

1. Write a note

1. Open Notes (press Alt+1 from anywhere) and hit New Note.
2. Just type. Markdown shortcuts work as you go: # for a heading, **bold**, > for a quote, ``` for a code block.
3. Type / for slash commands: images, code blocks, math, tables, callouts.
4. Type [] to drop an inline todo chip — a draft task that lives inside your writing.
5. The note auto-saves every few seconds. There is no save button.

2. Pull a task out of it

Select any sentence in your note. A floating menu appears with a sparkle button — click it to extract a task. Your selection becomes a structured todo with:

• A status (backlog, in_progress, pending, done — plus archive for things you’re done tracking)
• An optional checklist with per-item time estimates
• A link back to the original note, so the context isn’t lost

3. Put it on a real day

Open the Calendar tab. The unscheduled-todo tray sits at the side. Drag a task onto a free slot — it becomes a calendar block, linked back to its todo and its note. Resize to change duration. Click an empty slot to create a one-off event.

4. Try Quick Capture

Press Alt+I (or Cmd+I) from anywhere. Type naturally:

• “Meeting with Alex tomorrow at 3pm” → calendar event
• “Read chapter 5 by Friday” → todo with a deadline
• “Ideas from today’s standup” → note

The coach classifies your input, parses dates, and previews the result before saving. Less than five seconds end-to-end.

5. Hand it over to the coach

Open the chat sidebar and ask something it can act on:

“What should I focus on today?”

“Create a todo to review the quarterly report and schedule an hour for it tomorrow morning.”

The coach sees your notes, todos, calendar, and availability. It creates / updates / deletes the same way you would, and every action streams into a live log. Don’t like what it did? One-click undo.

Find anything

Press Cmd/Ctrl + K anywhere to open the search palette. Start typing and it searches everything you’ve captured — notes, notebooks, todos, events, links, tags and uploaded files (the Files chip) — as you type. Titles are matched with typo tolerance (“sourdogh” still finds Sourdough starter), so you don’t have to remember the exact spelling. Results are grouped by kind; the chips along the top narrow to one kind, and Tab cycles through them.

Two layers work together: a fast text match on titles and content, and a semantic match on meaning — results that only the semantic layer found carry a small ✦. If the semantic layer is unavailable (you’re offline, or the AI service is unreachable), the palette says so in a line at the bottom rather than silently showing less.

Enter opens the highlighted result where it lives: notes, todos, events and notebooks in a tab, tags in the Library, links in a new browser tab.

On your phone

Open the same address on your phone and add it to your home screen — it runs as an app, offline too. The bottom bar holds Notes, Todos, Calendar, Library and Chat; the header names the screen you’re on, and tapping that name lists your open tabs. When a note, task, tag or event fills the screen, a back chevron appears in the header. The seedling button captures from anywhere; while you’re writing, the bar above the keyboard holds undo, headings, formatting, lists, links, images, AI and — when your cursor is in a table — the table tools. On the task board, the pills above the columns tell you where you are; swipe or tap to move.

Where to go next

• Core Concepts — the philosophy behind the workflow
• Capture — master the editor
• Organize — Kanban, swimlanes, status flow
• Library — tag-driven collections of everything
• Quick Capture — natural language from anywhere
• AI Assistant — what the coach can actually do