Ariv vs Keepout

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.

Keepout is a private notes app for iPhone and iPad. Your writing stays on your device, encrypted at rest, with local tools for connecting and understanding ideas. PRIVATE BY DESIGN • AES-256-GCM encryption protects every note at rest. • Your vault key stays in this device's non-synchronizing Keychain. • Opaque filenames keep note titles and links out of the file system. • There is no account, cloud sync, analytics, remote prompt processing, or plaintext search index. CONNECTED KNOWLEDGE • Link notes with familiar double-bracket wiki links. • Follow backlinks and suggested related notes. • Explore an interactive knowledge graph built with Apple's local sentence embeddings. • Search decrypted notes in memory while the vault is unlocked. LOCAL AI • Ask questions, summarize a note, and suggest connections without sending note text to a server. • Use Apple Foundation Models on supported devices. • Choose the optional MLX engine for local inference. Its compact model downloads once on first use; inference then stays on your device. FOCUSED WRITING • Open the transient action bar from the toolbar or with Command-K on a hardware keyboard. • Type / in the editor for headings, lists, tasks, quotes, code blocks, dividers, and links. • Switch to a centered typewriter view that hides the side columns and softly fades the page edges. • Navigate with touch or hardware-keyboard shortcuts on iPad. • Markdown syntax and link destinations stay visually quiet until the caret enters them. Keepout stores each encrypted note in a .md file so your vault remains a collection of Markdown documents without exposing their contents at rest.