Library

Tag cards you can actually manage. Every note, todo, event, link, and file that shares a tag gathers on one page — and your saved links organize themselves by site.

One page per topic

The Library flips your workspace inside out. Instead of browsing by kind — notes here, tasks there, events somewhere else — you browse by topic. Pick a tag and everything that carries it gathers on a single page: notes, todos, calendar events, captured links, videos, and files, grouped and side by side.

You don’t file anything to make this happen. Tag a note while writing, tag a todo on the board, tag an event in the calendar — the Library assembles itself from the tags you were already using.

All your tags at a glance

The Library opens on a chart of every tag you have, drawn like a star map. Each tag is a star, and every mark means one thing:

  • Distance from the centre is how long ago the tag last changed. Three faint rings mark this week, this month and this season; a tag untouched for more than a month sits outside, drawn dormant.
  • The size of a star is how much the tag holds.
  • Point at a star and a small figure appears around it: its newest items — a dot for a note, a ring for a task, a diamond for an event, link or file, a short tick for a notebook page. Each arm is one branch of the tag’s page, and brightness means age, nothing else. At rest the chart shows the stars only, so it stays calm with many tags.
  • A nested tag is a moon on a small orbit beside its parent.
  • Gold dust at the lower edge counts what is still untagged; click it to open the inbox.

A tag keeps its place on the chart: its direction never changes, only how far out it drifts as it goes quiet. Point at a star and its card below lights up, and the other way round. Click a star to see its name, size, what it holds, its three newest items and which tags share items with it — a dashed line joins it to each of them. Click it again, or press Open, to go to the tag’s page: the star grows into the emblem at the top of that page. With the keyboard, Tab into the chart and use the arrow keys; Enter opens. You can also drop an untagged row from the inbox straight onto a star to file it. On a phone the chart is a small band at the top of the page; tap it to see it full screen.

The tag grid

Under the chart sits a grid of tag cards, one per tag. Each card starts with the tag’s star — the same mark as on the chart — and shows, at a glance:

  • Its name and when it last changed
  • Its description, if you’ve written one
  • What’s inside, split by kind — 4 notes · 7 todos · 2 events, counting only the types the tag actually contains
  • Its three newest items by name, with the same marks as the chart
  • Its nested tags as small chips along the foot — click one to open it, or drop an item on it to file it there

A tag that’s had no activity for 30 days is quiet: its card folds to one short line — quiet since Aug — and sinks below the live ones. Tags that hold nothing don’t take a card at all: they are names on one line under the grid, with Tidy up to remove them. When a search finds a nested tag on its own, it gets a card that says which tag holds it.

Above the grid: search by name, sort by name, most items, or recent, and create a tag with New tag…. A row of filter chips — all, notes, todos, events, links, files, notebooks — narrows the grid to tags holding that kind of thing. Press ⌥5 from anywhere to jump here.

The notebook shelf

Above the tag grid, a Notebooks shelf lists the books you’ve bound out of your notes — each with its page count and, if you’ve written one, its description. Click one to open it in a note tab, on its first page. The shelf only appears once you have a notebook; see Capture for how to build one. A notebook can carry a tag of its own, same as a note or todo, so it shows up on that tag’s shelf alongside its pages.

The untagged inbox

A sidebar rail above the tag list collects your recent notes, todos, and events that haven’t been tagged yet — the stuff still waiting to be filed. Drag a row onto a tag (in the sidebar, the grid, or its star on the chart) to file it there in one motion; on touch devices, tap the file button on the row instead. A stray capture you don’t need can go from here too: hover a note or todo row and click the bin — it goes to the Trash, and the receipt’s Undo brings it back. A task’s own writing (its body note) is filed with the task, so it never shows up here as a loose note.

The gardener

You don’t have to file everything yourself. Whenever you — or a connected agent — add a note, a task or a link without a tag, the gardener takes a look and suggests where it belongs: a tag, a notebook, or the open task a note was written for.

The suggestion appears next to the item itself, as a dashed chip with a seedling where its tag would go: on its row in the Untagged group of the Notes and Todos lists, on its card on the board, in the Library’s Untagged rail, and beside the Add tag pill when the item is open. Click the chip to file it — a receipt with Undo appears — or click × to dismiss it for good. An Untagged group with several suggestions shows File n suggested to accept them all at once. Nothing is filed until you accept.

Tasks that are already done. When a note, an event or a finished task says an open task is done — a note “Sent the invoice to Acme” while Send invoice to Acme is still open — the gardener puts a looks done — see … chip on that open task, naming the item that says so. It only does this when it is quite sure. Click it to mark the task done (with Undo, which puts back the status it had), or × if it isn’t done — it won’t ask about that pair again. Recurring tasks are never offered.

Describe your tags. The gardener judges by what each tag means. The tag page and the tag picker remind you while a tag has none, and once it holds a few items, Draft from what’s here writes a first version for you to edit — your own words still work best. A one-line description (“My day job: the AI unit, its projects and meetings”) is what it reads first; a tag without one is only offered once it holds a few items, and then more cautiously. A brand-new tag with no description and nothing in it is never suggested.

To have it look through older items that were never filed, open Settings → Agent Settings → Gardener and choose Look through my untagged items. The same switch turns it off.

Planted by an agent

When a connected agent — Claude, ChatGPT, the in-app coach — creates a note, a task or a link, the Library says so: its card reads Planted by Claude · 3d and carries a small Keep button. Keep it and it is yours, like anything you wrote, and the label goes. You rarely need the button: editing the item, filing it under a tag, or accepting the gardener’s suggestion keeps it too. In the untagged rail a planted row has a hatched edge, and a tag card’s growth line shows how much of the shelf is still planted.

“Planted by” only shows in the Library and the Round. The notes list, the board and the calendar look the same as ever.

Evergreen notes

Under a note’s editor, Mark as evergreen says: this is my settled view. The note gets a small leaf after its title — in the notes list, the Library and search.

Evergreen means something to your agents too. A connected agent sees the mark and is told to cite the note, not to contradict it silently. It may still edit an evergreen note — that pauses the mark, the note’s agent ribbon adds ”— and it is no longer evergreen”, and Today’s ledger says so. Undo brings back the text and the mark together; Keep as evergreen keeps the agent’s text and puts the mark back. An agent can never delete an evergreen note, and only you can mark or unmark one.

Evergreen notes are also your recall deck: Today asks you about them now and then. (This replaced the old “Ask me about this later” star — starred notes became evergreen.) Not useful on a recall card stops the questions; the note stays evergreen.

Re-filing: move a card to another tag

Items can carry several tags — the first one is the primary, and it’s what colours the card and picks its board swimlane. So on a tag’s page, dragging a row from the list onto another tag in the rail asks a real question: move it, or add it?

  • Drop it and the item moves — it leaves this tag and joins that one.
  • Hold ⌥ (Alt on Windows and Linux) and drop and the item is added — it keeps this tag and gains the other, so it now appears on both pages.

The rail tells you which before you let go. While a row is in flight the whole rail lights up as a destination and the rail row under the pointer shows MOVE (solid outline) or +ADD (dashed) — and your cursor grows a + badge in add mode. The row you’re dragging flies into the tag it lands on. On a move the item leaves this tag’s list; on an add it stays exactly where it was, which is the difference made visible.

A move keeps everything else about the item intact. If the tag you dragged it off was its primary, the new tag takes that same slot — the item’s colour and swimlane follow where you put it, rather than jumping to some other tag it happened to carry. Its other tags are untouched, and its position on their pages doesn’t shift either. The undo in the toast puts it back precisely.

Move to… → Another tag… does the move without dragging — that’s the route without a mouse, and on a phone (long-press a row) it’s the way to re-file. Remove from “tag” in the same menu takes the item off this tag and leaves its other tags alone.

The same gesture works on the Library overview: drag a row from the untagged inbox onto a tag card, a star, or a tag in the sidebar to file it.

Merging todos

On a tag’s page, hold ⌥ (Alt) and drag one task’s row onto another task’s row in the list to merge them — or pick Move to… → Merge into…, which also works on a phone.

What travels across:

  • The dropped todo’s name becomes a step in the target’s checklist, with its own steps listed under it — so you can still see what the work was, not just its loose sub-tasks.
  • Context, linked notes and attachments are combined.
  • The tighter deadline and the higher priority win. If the todo you dropped was due sooner, that deadline is now the target’s — a merge never quietly loses a date you were tracking.
  • The scheduled block carries over only if the target had no time booked; a block already on your calendar is never moved.
  • A step whose text the target already has isn’t added twice.

The dropped todo goes to the trash, so nothing is destroyed. An undo toast reverses the whole thing — the target goes back to how it was and the source comes back out of the trash with its original identity, links and all.

Merging notes

Two notes that say the same thing can become one. On a tag’s page, hold ⌥ (Alt) and drag a note’s row onto another note’s row: the dragged note’s text is added to the target under a heading with its name, its tags and linked tasks come along, every note that linked to it now links to the target, and the dragged note goes to the Trash.

One Undo takes the whole merge back: the target as it was, the merged note out of the Trash, every link pointing where it did. If you edited the target since, Undo is refused rather than losing your edit. Move to… → Merge into… does the same without dragging — on a phone, that is how you merge.

Move to the Trash

On a tag’s page, select a note, task or link and press Delete — or pick Move to Trash in Move to…, or in the bar that appears when you select several rows. It goes to the Trash with Undo in the receipt. The Trash keeps it for 30 days.

The Library is also the home of every link you save — see Quick Capture for how fast saving one is. Switch to the links filter chip and the grid grows site shelves: one card per website, generated automatically from your links’ addresses. Each shelf shows the site’s icon, how many links it holds, and the newest thumbnails — all your YouTube links gather under YouTube (short youtu.be links included), GitHub under GitHub, and so on.

Open a shelf and you get a page with every link from that site, newest first. Site shelves are provenance, not filing: a link still counts as untagged until you give it a real tag, so the inbox keeps nudging you to file the ones that matter.

On any link card, wherever it appears:

  • Click opens the URL in a new tab
  • Videos play in a theater — the player floats over the page; press Esc or click outside and you’re back exactly where you were. Nothing loads from the video site until you press play.
  • Hover reveals two quiet buttons: copy link and a ⋯ editor for the link’s one-line comment, its tag, or deleting it

The reader

A page saved with the browser extension keeps its article text, and its card offers Read. The reader shows the page’s text without the site around it, with Open original one click away. Select a passage and Highlight it; add your own line — why it matters — because a highlight with your own words is the one worth keeping. Send to a note puts the highlights into a note as quote blocks that link back to the page. The saved text is also found by search.

Managing tags

Every tag card has a ⋯ menu — the same one you get on an open tag page — with everything you need to keep your tags tidy:

  • Rename — on a tag’s page the title itself is editable; click it, type, press Enter. If the new name collides with an existing tag, CoachKeeper offers to merge the two instead of failing.
  • Color — pick from the shared tag palette. The new color follows the tag everywhere: board swimlanes, calendar chips, note chips.
  • Merge into… — pick another tag and everything moves across; the old tag disappears.
  • Delete — your items are never deleted, they simply lose the tag. Nested tags move up a level rather than being orphaned. The confirmation tells you exactly what will happen before you commit.

You can also drag a tag card onto another: a plain drop asks to merge it into that tag, and holding ⌥ while you drop nests it under that tag instead. Merging, deleting, nesting and pruning empty tags each come with Undo in the receipt.

A tag’s page

Open a card and the tag gets a page of its own: a spine in its color, a large title, the item count, and an editable one-line description that saves as you go. It’s a small thing, but it turns a label into a curated collection.

You never lose the map while you’re deep in one topic: every other tag waits in a slim rail beside the page — one click switches. On mobile the rail lies down as a swipeable strip of pills. And under the title, a facts strip sums the tag up: what it holds by kind, when it was last active, and when it was created. When the tag holds evergreen notes or planted items, it adds a growth fact. When the tag holds todos, open in board jumps to the Kanban filtered to exactly that tag.

The crest

The top of a tag’s page carries its crest: the tag’s own star from the chart, drawn larger, with its nested tags as small gold moons. It is the same picture you clicked, so you always know where you are. Point at a section of the list and its arm of the crest lights up; point at a row and its point lights up.

Branches and the list

Under the header is one list of everything filed under the tag, grouped into branches: notebooks and nested tags first, then your branches, then the map’s themes for everything else, and last what is not on a branch yet. Every row starts with its mark — a dot for a note, a ring for a task (filled when done), a diamond for an event, link or file, a gold moon for a nested tag — and says real facts: In progress · 2/5 · due Fri, next Thu 10:00, wikipedia.org, Evergreen, also: kestrel. A task’s own notes and a notebook’s pages sit indented under it. Finished tasks fold into Done (n). Click a section name to show only that branch; Show all brings the rest back.

Filter with the box (press /) or the chips All · Notes · Tasks · Due soon · Changed. + New here adds a note or task to the tag — and to the branch you are looking at.

Move to… puts an item on a branch, on a new branch, back to the map’s grouping, or into another tag — with Undo. On a computer you can also drag: a row onto a section name, or onto another row to put it on that row’s branch. Hold ⌥ (Alt) over a row of the same kind to merge the two, or a note over a task to make it one of the task’s notes. Drag a row onto another tag in the rail to re-file it. Moving an item onto a theme, or renaming a theme, makes that branch yours: from then on the map never moves what you placed. Regroup asks the map to group the loose items again and shows what would move — Keep this or Go back.

Since you last looked. When an agent worked in the tag while you were away, a strip at the top says so — “Since Tue: 2 new, 1 edited by Claude”. Open it: each change has Keep and Undo.

Keyboard: j/k move, Enter opens, x selects, m moves, e marks a note evergreen, Space ticks a task done, Delete moves to the Trash, / filters, Esc steps back.

On a phone the list is the page, with a small crest beside the title. Branch chips under the filter show one branch at a time, and a long press on a row opens Move to…

Where this stands

Above the list, Where this stands holds a few short lines about the topic — what’s open, stalled, or overlapping — each citing the items it’s about. The first lines come from the AI’s reading of the tag; it only shows when there is something written.

The lines are yours to take over: a first attempt at reading a topic is a starting point, not a verdict. Write straight on a line to rewrite it — no box opens, the words are simply editable where they sit. × drops a line, + Add a line starts one of your own, and Enter commits (Escape puts the line back). The chips stay with the line: rewording a sentence doesn’t change what it points at, while a line you write from scratch cites nothing, which is honest.

Once you’ve touched a line the reading is yours: Regroup groups the loose items again and leaves your sentences alone. A connected AI assistant reading the tag is told which lines you wrote, so it quotes them instead of second-guessing them.

Notes that fed nothing

Under the list, a line counts the tag’s notes that are more than a month old and that nothing uses yet — no note links to them or from them, no task uses them, no notebook holds them. It is a prompt, not a score: link one to a task or a note, put it in a notebook, or let it go. Tap it to open the Round on just those notes.

The Round

Tend · N at the top of the Library opens the Round: up to ten small decisions, one at a time, then a receipt. It takes a few minutes and then it is done — the number never grows past ten, and it is not there at all when there is nothing to tend.

Each card asks one plain question and says what every choice will do:

  • An agent wrote this — Keep it, Merge into another note…, File under a tag… (when it has no tag), or Move to Trash
  • Two notes, one thought — merge one into the other, or Keep both
  • Two tags, one shelf — merge one into the other, or Keep both tags
  • The gardener suggests — file it there, or leave it
  • Untouched for three months (and in no notebook, linked from no note, no task’s context) — Mark evergreen, Keep it as it is, Merge into another note…, or Move to Trash

On a computer, keys 1–4 choose, S skips, ⌘Z takes back the last decision and Esc closes. On a phone the Round is a full sheet with the choices under your thumb. Every decision is an ordinary change with its own Undo, and the receipt at the end lists each one.

“Keep both”, “Keep both tags” and “Keep it as it is” are remembered: the Round does not ask about them again — and neither does a connected agent that runs lint_garden.

The almanac

At the foot of the Library, the Almanac keeps a quiet record of your tending, month by month: what you kept, marked evergreen, merged, moved to the Trash and pruned. Months only — no days, no streaks.

Getting things into the Library

  • Tag notes, todos, and events anywhere you work with them — the tag picker supports multiple tags per item, and the first one is the primary chip
  • Paste a URL into Quick Capture — it becomes a Link instantly, no AI round-trip, with its title and thumbnail fetched in the background; paste several URLs at once and they’re captured as one batch. Tagged or not, every link also joins its site shelf automatically.
  • Tag files from their cards — uploads join the collection too

Why it works

Tags in CoachKeeper are shared across everything — the same tags color your board swimlanes, your calendar events, and your Library cards. Lane counts on the board agree with Library counts, because they’re counting the same memberships. One tagging habit, three payoffs.

Next steps

  • Organize — multi-tag todos, swimlanes, and the tag picker
  • Calendar — tagging events and seeing them by topic
  • Quick Capture — capture links in seconds