JotDown

Inspiration

Every day, people have hundreds of small ideas, reflections, and reminders—but these thoughts get scattered across Notes, Reminders, Messages, and sticky notes. There’s no single place that captures how your day actually felt or what ran through your mind. We wanted a seamless, frictionless way to capture and understand our thoughts without breaking the flow of life. That’s what inspired JotDown.

What it does

JotDown is an end-to-end, cross-device thought-capture and reflection experience.
It lets users jot down ideas from iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, Siri, or Shortcuts—instantly and without friction.
Thoughts are automatically categorized using personalized on-device foundation models.
Smart Search uses RAG and on-device intelligence to surface answers to natural questions like “What should I focus on this weekend?”
Users can visualize their thoughts and emotions using an interactive experience

How we built it

On-device Foundation Models Framework for personalized categorization and Smart Search.
RAG pipeline that retrieves the top semantically relevant thoughts and uses them as context for foundation-model responses.
Swift Data to securely store all user thoughts locally on device.
Siri and Shortcuts integration, widgets, and fast thought input.
Minimalist Mac app with Spotlight and menu-bar input for frictionless note-taking during work or class.
Apple Watch app for quick note input, search, and viewing recent thoughts.
Visualization system mapping thoughts to Plutchik’s emotions and presenting them interactively.

Challenges we ran into

Using new Foundation Models Framework and working with cross platform apps
Implementing a unique but minimalist design for the app

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Seamless cross-device thought input (iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, Siri, Shortcuts, widgets).
Fully on-device AI for categorization and Smart Search, ensuring privacy and reliability.
Building a unified and frictionless experience that mirrors how thoughts naturally occur throughout the day.
Creating intuitive visualizations that help users understand and reflect