Tessellate _^notes

Your notes, pieced together
_{Formerly MemoryMap AI}

Capture anything. Ask anything. Tessellate files it, links it and answers from it, all on your own device.

Download · Quick start · Website · Documentation

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Note

Tessellate is in beta. It works and it is tested, but some parts are still rough: you may meet lag in places (long note lists, the graph and mind maps), screens that need more polish, and features that are planned but not built yet. Your notes stay on your machine and are kept safe by backups, but please keep your own copy of anything important while we are in beta. We are working through the rough edges release by release, so updates come often. If something is slow, broken or missing, open an issue and say what you were doing: it is the fastest way to get it fixed.

Installed it before it was called Tessellate? Open this first.

The app was renamed, and the installer, the program folder and the downloads are renamed with it, so the new installer does not update the old one in place.

1. Save your notes first. Copy your data folder somewhere safe: %APPDATA%\MemoryMap AI (older installs) or %APPDATA%\Tessellate. Press Win + R, paste the path and press Enter. A backup from Settings also works.
2. Uninstall the old version. If a folder is left behind, delete it: C:\Program Files\MemoryMap AI (the program only, not your notes).
3. Download the latest installer from the releases page and install it.

Your notes live in the data folder, not in Program Files, so the new version finds them. If it does not, close it and copy your saved folder back to %APPDATA%\Tessellate.

What it is

Type a thought and a local AI files it, tags it and links it to what you already wrote. Ask a question later and get an answer with the notes behind it.

capture a thought  ->  it files itself  ->  ask a question  ->  an answer, with its sources

• Files itself. Every note lands in a category with tags and links, and says how sure it is.
• Answers you can check. Each sentence of an answer cites the note it came from.
• Private by design. One SQLite file on your computer: no account, no cloud, no telemetry. The AI runs on your machine. A local model is recommended but optional: Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp's llama-server all work.
• Works without AI. With no model, Atlas still answers from your notes (dates, tasks, reminders, how-to questions) with citations, and the app files, searches and keeps every feature working.
• Quick unlock. A PIN unlocks the notebook on this computer, kept in the system's protected store; the password still works everywhere.
• More than notes. Documents, whiteboards and mind maps, a graph of your ideas, a timeline and reminders, in one app.

Features

Open a section for the detail.

Capture: type, paste, draw, dictate or record; import from Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, Apple Notes and files

• Type, paste, draw, or dictate and record meetings (transcribed on this machine with Whisper). Alt+N opens a quick note over any tab. #word tags a note, and Markdown works inline, including [[wiki links]] and ==highlights==. Copy or cut with nothing selected takes the whole line, in the capture box and in the editors.
• Put an emoji or an icon in a note or a document from one picker (Emoji or icon in the toolbar, the Insert menu and the / menu): an emoji as itself, one of 1,530 icons as :ph-name:.
• Bring notes in from a folder of Markdown files, a PDF, Word file or slide deck, Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, Apple Notes or a Tessellate notebook folder, or clip a web page with a bookmarklet. Importing the same thing twice adds only what is new.
• Attach any file. Images are captioned, read by a vision model and run through Tesseract OCR (or RapidOCR) where each is available; scanned PDFs are read page by page, and the OCR workspace lets you correct each region before it becomes a note.
• A note saved while the server is away waits on this device and is sent once when the server is back.

Organise: filed by meaning, honest certainty, tags, categories, spaces, a background librarian

• The AI picks a category by meaning (or asks, in guided mode), shows an honest estimate of how sure it was (never 100%) and suggests tags, one press to keep each. With no AI, tags come from the notes most like it.
• Manage categories and tags by hand: create, rename, merge, split, delete and move, each step undoable. Spaces keep separate areas of life apart.
• A background librarian can tag, link and flag duplicates on a schedule you set. It never deletes anything.
• Everything lives in the Library: notes, documents, chats, boards and maps, images and files, bookmarks, the AI skills, a contents tree and an activity log.

Ask: answers with a citation per sentence, saved chats, Agent mode with tools and skills

• A question returns a conversational answer and the notes behind it, with a numbered citation after each sentence. Chat is saved and resumable, and the line under an answer in progress says what is happening: reaching the model, reading your notes, thinking, writing, or the tool in use.
• Questions collects the questions your notes ask in passing, and marks one answered when a later note answers it.
• In Agent mode the assistant has 72 tools to search, link, organise and act on your notebook. Anything destructive asks first, as does any change or web request after it has read a web page or an imported note. Every step is shown.
• 21 built-in skills (and your own) run multi-step jobs as a visible checklist. Small models are first-class: a small-model mode gives a 4B model one step and one tool at a time.
• A command palette (Ctrl/Cmd+K) runs any command or goes to any place (typed words it cannot match go to Find anything, Ctrl+P, which searches notes and documents), and a popup agent (Ctrl+Shift+A) does things from any tab. Reminders take plain language: "call Sam tomorrow evening". The palette also starts a timer ("timer 10 minutes") or a stopwatch on the status bar, counts the words in a selection, and inserts a template where the cursor is.
• Statistics counts the notebook, your reminders and what you use, with this week against last, from the Dashboard's activity heatmap.

Write: a long-form editor with live preview, local spelling and grammar, history and export

• Documents is a long-form editor with Live, Source, Split and Read views, spelling and grammar checks that run on your computer, version history, focus mode, and code files with line numbers, the line you are on lightly highlighted. A document reopens where you left it.
• The Writing room turns rough thoughts into a proper note, or a pasted block into several linked notes, before anything is saved.
• Export a document as Markdown, HTML, PDF or Word, and your notes as JSON, CSV or Markdown.

Visualise: graph, timeline, whiteboards and mind maps, dashboard

• The Graph draws your notes as a map coloured by category, with the reason for each link written down.
• The Timeline puts every note and reminder on a time axis.
• Boards hold cards, sketches, images and shapes that contain text, joined by connectors that carry a label, with a library of shapes, flowchart symbols and 1,530 icons. Insert, Emoji and icons places an emoji as a sticker or an icon you can recolour, and dragging a card, shape or topic to the "Drop here to delete" strip at the foot of the canvas deletes it, with an Undo.
• A board can be a mind map, with tasks to tick, a note behind any topic and numbered branches. The centre, main branches and deeper topics each get their own size and look (Classic, Outline, Boxed or Flat, or your own per level), and a topic can wear any icon or emoji. Maps export as Markdown, OPML or FreeMind, and import XMind.
• The Dashboard shows your capture streak, statistics, a weekly digest and the widgets you choose.

Also: themes, accessibility, a guided tour, sign-in

• Thirteen themes, each in light or dark, with your own accent, type, density and corners. A drawn face for every person and persona, and an optional corner companion.
• An Interface animations switch (Settings, Appearance, Effects & accessibility) turns the short fades and slides off or on, apart from Reduce motion, which stills the large movement. A Back and Forward list in the status bar shows where you have been, with an icon for each kind.
• Keyboard and screen reader support: named controls, 4.5:1 contrast, a layout that holds at 400% zoom, and a switch for single-key shortcuts.
• A guided tour, and errors written as plain sentences that say what to do.
• Signing in is on by default and can be turned off on a computer only you use.

Screenshots

Captured from the app in the dark theme at 1440 by 900.

_{Ask: a question to your own notes, answered with a numbered citation to the note behind each sentence}

_{Chat: ask in plain English, with skills, web search, a plan step and agent mode beside the box}

_{Graph: dense clusters, loose webs and notes on their own, coloured by category; a link with a reason is drawn in the accent}

Seventeen more: the Library and its Activity view, Timeline, Reminders, Documents and focus mode, a board, a mind map, the command palette, Tools and features, Settings, Your look, the popup agent, the corner companion, Atlas, light and dark side by side, and a phone

_{Library: everything you have made, in one place}

_{Activity: a record of what you did, one line each, beside what you made}

_{Timeline: every note and reminder on a time axis}

_{Reminders: due dates with priority and repeats, linked to the note they came from}

_{Documents: a long-form editor with Live, Source, Split and Read views; it reopens where you left off}

_{Focus mode: the page and nothing else, with the writing checks beside it when you want them}

_{Boards: cards, shapes that hold text, and connectors that carry a label}

_{Mind maps: numbered branches, a look per level, icons, topics that are tasks, and a note behind any topic}

_{Command palette: Ctrl/⌘-K runs a command or goes to a place, and hands a search to Find anything}

_{Tools & features: everything the app can do, grouped and searchable}

_{Settings: thirteen themes, your own accent, type, density and corners, and every setting searchable}

_{Your look: a face drawn from your name, and every part of it yours to choose}

_{Popup agent: ask Atlas to do something from any tab}

_{The corner companion: Atlas, you, a persona or a character of your own, keeping you company on any page}

_{Atlas: the star spirit who keeps your notebook}

_{Light or dark: every theme comes in both, or follows your system}

_{On a phone: one column, the tabs at your thumb}

Quick start

Pick the way that suits you. Only the last needs a terminal.

Windows. Download Tessellate-Setup-*.exe from the latest release and run it. The app opens in its own window. Windows shows a "protected your PC" screen because the installer is not code-signed yet: what to click.

Linux. Download Tessellate-*-linux-x86_64.tar.gz from the same page, unpack it with tar -xzf and run Tessellate. Use the tarball rather than the .zip beside it: a zip may drop the executable bit and leave a launcher that will not start. The window needs GTK and WebKit (python3-gi and gir1.2-webkit2-4.1 on Debian and Ubuntu).

macOS, or any platform from source. Clone the repository and run ./start-desktop.sh for the app's own window, or ./start.sh for a browser tab (on Windows, start-desktop.bat or start.bat). The launcher builds a private Python environment, installs everything and opens http://localhost:8000. Add --doctor to check the machine and print a fix for each problem. Each action is also one double-click: doctor, reinstall (rebuilds the Python environment; your notes are untouched) and tools (a menu of every launcher action), as .sh and .bat. The same actions are in the app, under Settings, About, Maintenance. docs/INSTALL.md has a step-by-step version for first-time terminal users.

Then:

1. Choose a password when the app first opens.
2. Add the AI. Install Ollama and pull a model that fits your machine; ollama pull llama3.2 through your computer's terminal is a safe start. Which model, from "runs on a laptop with no GPU" upwards, is in docs/MODELS.md. LM Studio, llama.cpp's llama-server, Jan and vLLM work too, through Settings, Models.
3. Write a note, then ask about it in Notes, Ask.

A first install needs the internet once. The first setup downloads the search model and the packages you chose; after that Tessellate works offline.

The first launch downloads the search model. Search and filing by meaning use a built-in model that needs the sentence-transformers package. If it is missing, the app installs it the first time it is needed: a one-time download of several hundred MB (more on Windows, where it brings torch) that needs the internet and can take several minutes. Settings, Search and index, Search engine says when it is running. To avoid the download, pull nomic-embed-text in Ollama and pick it in the same place.

Requirements and optional extras

• To run it: the Windows installer and the Linux tarball need nothing else. From source you need Python 3.11 or newer (CI runs 3.11 to 3.13).
• For the AI: Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible server. The app is useful without one.
• Optional extras. Settings, Packages installs each one from inside the app, with no terminal. None is needed for the core.

Extra	What it adds
Search by meaning (sentence-transformers)	Matching ideas rather than words; about 2 GB with torch
Voice notes (faster-whisper)	Local dictation for the microphone buttons
Desktop window (pywebview)	The app in its own window, and a tray icon on Windows
Import documents (markitdown)	PDF, Word and slide decks become notes
Read scanned PDFs (pypdfium2)	Scanned pages become images a vision or OCR model can read
Search inside images (Tesseract OCR)	Text in images becomes searchable; also needs the Tesseract program
Read images without Tesseract (RapidOCR)	A second local reader, nothing else to install; used when Tesseract isn't ready
Run Python files (Pyodide)	Runs a .py document in a sandbox; a pinned download that works offline
Tool calling without Ollama (needle)	A small built-in model that picks tools when no model server is running; a pinned download that works offline
Translate offline (Bergamot, English to Spanish)	Translate this, in the command palette, with no model; a pinned 27 MB download that works offline

Privacy

Everything lives in one folder: tessellate.db (your notes), preferences.json, uploads/ and backups/ (a snapshot once a day). Set TESSELLATE_DATA_DIR to put it elsewhere. Settings, Import & export exports your notes as JSON, CSV or Markdown, the whole notebook as a folder (each note as Markdown with its attachments and a .json file of every field, plus documents and boards, which imports back whole), or as a full backup that you can seal with a password. Every import keeps a report naming anything it left out.

• The server listens on this computer only. Letting a phone or another computer on your network in is a switch in Settings, Account & security; it always asks for your password, over HTTPS with a certificate made on this computer (Settings, Account & security shows its fingerprint).
• The AI runs where you point it, and a setting that is on by default refuses a model address that is not on your computer or network.
• Private notes are encrypted at rest with a key derived from your password, and kept out of search, the graph and every AI tool. A recovery key, shown once, lets "Forgot your password?" on the lock screen set a new password and keep them.
• Web search is off by default, and the update check waits for your answer to the question the first start asks. Web search sends only your search words.
• Settings, Privacy lists every connection the app has made.

docs/PRIVACY.md has the full model, including sessions, the browser protections and what to do if you forget your password. To report a vulnerability, see SECURITY.md.

Performance

Each interaction has a time budget, held by a test that fails when it is exceeded (tests/test_budgets.py for the server, tests-e2e/specs/budgets.spec.js in a real browser; the table is BUDGETS in src/tessellate/api/routes_bench.py). Measured in headless Chromium on a four-core machine under load, on a 500-note notebook with a board of 500 objects and a document of 50,000 words. Each measured figure is the slowest of four runs' medians; the budget is 1.5 times it.

Interaction	Measured (ms)	Budget (ms)
Boot to first paint	713	1070
First interaction	4639	6960
List paint	139	210
Search	30	50
Board open	108	170
Document open	359	540

The same figures as bars, slowest first (first interaction left out, as it would dwarf the rest):

Interaction	Measured
Boot to first paint	713 ms	██████████████
Document open	359 ms	███████
List paint	139 ms	███
Board open	108 ms	██
Search	30 ms	█

The first interaction is the first click the app answers after a cold start, with the session kept. GET /models/bench/budgets?live=true times the server's share of each against your own notebook.

Documentation

Document	What it answers
INSTALL	The Windows installer, the launcher, manual setup, updating and uninstalling
DOCKER	Running Tessellate in Docker: compose, volumes, ports, a model server on the host
MCP	The MCP server: tools, resources, client config, security
MODELS	Which model suits your machine, and using a server other than Ollama
PRIVACY	What touches the network, private-note encryption, sessions
TROUBLESHOOTING	Common problems and their fixes
ARCHITECTURE	How the pieces fit, and where to change any given thing
DESIGN	The design system every screen is written against
RELEASING	How a version is cut and published
ROADMAP	What is open, and in what order
CHANGELOG	What changed, release by release
SECURITY	How to report a vulnerability

Status. Version 0.5.0. This is a beta (0.x). Capture, chat with checkable answers, the graph, documents, boards and mind maps, the OCR workspace, private notes and themes are built and stable, with desktop builds for Windows and Linux. Settings, Help has a guided tour of the real controls.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first: the one rule is that every feature must work with no cloud service. In short:

pytest -n auto                  # 10,200+ tests, fully offline, every AI call faked
bash scripts/gate.sh --changed  # lints, node --check, ruff, and the tests that name your files
ruff check .                    # what CI lints with

The frontend is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript in frontend/, served as it is, with no build step. Run node --check on each script you edit. docs/ARCHITECTURE.md maps the backend modules and the frontend's load order.

Licence

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.

You may use, study, modify and share this, and anything built on it must stay under the same licence, including a modified copy run as a network service. Tessellate is a local-first app, and the AGPL keeps a closed, hosted version of it from being offered back to the people it was written for.

The libraries vendored into the app, with their versions and licences, are credited in docs/THIRD_PARTY.md.