Ariv vs Nook

Ariv is a local-first second brain for notes, tasks, journaling, study, projects, and personal knowledge management. Capture ideas, organize work, search your vault, ask questions about your notes, and keep your thinking connected without building a complicated plugin setup. Everything is built in: - Markdown notes and daily writing - Smart dashboard for active work - Tasks and Kanban - Quick capture - Voice memos with transcription - Ask Brain, an AI assistant for your notes - Calendar-aware planning and meeting context - Graph view and visual maps - Templates and presentation mode - Unified search across files, tags, and content Ariv is designed around a simple idea: your notes have a life. New thoughts land in your inbox. Active notes stay visible while you are working on them. Older notes move out of the way but stay searchable, linkable, and ready to resurface when you need them. No manual filing system required. No weekend spent setting up plugins. Open the app and start thinking. Your files stay yours: - Notes are stored as plain Markdown - Works with existing Markdown folders and vaults - No proprietary format - No account required to use the local app - Optional end-to-end encrypted sync is available AI is optional and on your terms. Use your own API key, run supported local models, or use Ariv's managed AI add-on. Ask Brain can answer questions from your vault and point back to the notes it used. Whether you are a student, writer, researcher, developer, founder, or lifelong learner, Ariv gives you one place to capture, connect, and use what you know. Think freely. No setup required.

Nook is an RSS reader for people who would rather choose what they read. Add a feed, or paste a website and let Nook find the feed for you. Your subscriptions, what you have read, and what you have starred live on your device. There is no account to create, and nothing about your reading is sent anywhere. A READER THAT GETS OUT OF THE WAY Articles render natively, with real typography rather than a web page squeezed into a phone. Headings, quotes, code, tables, nested lists, images, and video all keep their structure. Set the font, size, line height, letter spacing, and colours, and switch any single feed to a full-page reader or the original site when its own layout is worth keeping. WORKS WITHOUT A NETWORK Nook is offline-first, not offline-capable. It launches, lists, and reads with no connection. Choose the articles to keep for later and decide when they expire. SYNC WITHOUT AN ACCOUNT Point Nook at a folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or anywhere else that syncs files, and your feeds, read state, stars, categories, and folders follow you between devices. The folder service moves the files; Nook merges them, per device, so two devices changed at once do not overwrite each other. No server of ours is involved, because there isn't one. TRANSLATION, ON YOUR TERMS Translate a full article or just the titles in a list. Apple Intelligence runs on the device and costs nothing. Gemini is opt-in and uses an API key you provide, kept in this device's Keychain and never placed in the sync folder. ORGANISE IT HOWEVER YOU THINK Folders for feeds, colour-coded categories for articles, keyword rules, and text filters that collect what you would rather not see instead of deleting it. Optionally let Apple Intelligence or Gemini sort new articles by subject. QUIET BY DEFAULT No advertising, no tracking, no analytics, and no engagement mechanics. Badges and new-article notifications start off, and Nook asks for permission only after you turn one on — never at launch. PUBLISHING (BETA, INVITATION ONLY) Nook can also publish what you write. Articles are stored as records in an AT Protocol repository that belongs to you, and served as a web page with a real feed others can subscribe to. You can export every record and delete it at any time, including while publishing is suspended. This part of Nook is in beta and needs an invitation; everything above works without one.