Overlay One vs Skein Notes

Overlay is an AI assistant with a memory. Capture anything — a note, a task, a link, a half-formed idea — and Overlay's brain organizes it, connects it, and remembers it. Then you can chat with everything you know. Most apps make you file things away and dig them back out. Overlay does the filing for you and brings the right context back the moment you need it. WHAT YOU CAN DO • Capture in one tap — Jot a quick note from anywhere. Overlay's brain decides whether it's a note, a task, or something worth remembering, so you never stop to choose. • Chat that actually knows you — Ask questions and get answers grounded in your own notes, tasks, and saved pages — not a blank-slate chatbot. • Tasks, automatically — Action items are pulled out of what you capture. No separate to-do ritual. • A brain that grows — Overlay builds a living memory from what you save: the people, projects, and topics you care about, and how they connect. • Your best prompts, saved — Keep the prompts you rely on a tap away. ONE BRAIN, EVERYWHERE Overlay works on iPhone, in your browser, and on the web — all synced. Save a page from your laptop and it's waiting in your pocket. Every capture is tagged with where it came from, so nothing gets lost. BUILT ON THE BEST MODELS Overlay runs on leading AI models, including Anthropic's Claude and Google Gemini, choosing the right one for the job. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Your knowledge is yours. Everything is secured per-account, and you stay in control of what Overlay remembers. Stop losing your best thinking. Scale your brain.

Skein is a notes app for people who want to keep their own files. Your vault is a folder of plain Markdown on your device or in iCloud Drive. Skein reads and writes those files directly — the same folder you open in Skein for Mac, or in any other editor. Nothing is locked in a database, and there is no service in the middle. Write it down before you lose it The app opens on a capture field. Type the thought and send it; the first line becomes the note's title and Skein files it where you told it to. No dialog, no folder picker, no naming a file before you have written anything. Find it again Search matches titles the moment you start typing and searches inside every note once the index is ready, ranked, with the matching lines and their line numbers — tap one and land on it. The Vault filters by name, by #tag or by folder in one field, and tags are real: tap one anywhere in the app to see everything carrying it. Real Markdown, properly Headings, lists, task lists, tables, footnotes, code blocks, callouts, ==highlights== and [[wikilinks]] — read cleanly and edited as text. A keyboard bar puts the things you actually reach for above the keys, including arrows that move by character and by word, and you can choose which of them appear. Type / for a command, #for a tag it already knows. Canvas Open a JSON Canvas board, move cards, connect them, colour them and write on them. The same file, the same format Obsidian writes, so a board made on the Mac opens here and back again. It keeps your writing safe Skein keeps earlier versions of a note as you edit, so you can go back to what you wrote this morning. When the same note has been changed in two places, Skein keeps both and asks — it never picks a winner quietly. Also Share text from any app straight into your vault. Four themes, including one for reading at night. Dynamic Type throughout, and full VoiceOver support. Skein does not have an account, a subscription for the basics, a server, or telemetry. Your notes never leave your device except through iCloud Drive, which is yours. Skein for Mac is a separate app on the same purchase.