Noto

Noto is a chatbot that creates notes—locally on your system. These notes are available at any time, and the more you chat with Noto, the better he gets to know you and the topics that interest you. The idea behind Noto’s development is to use it as a coach and mentor. It helps you develop strategies and reminds you of relevant things. Since it takes notes about you and your progress (whatever topic you’re currently working on), it has a much more comprehensive understanding of the progress you’re making.

Noto has a WebGUI:

And Noto has a TUI:

Getting started

1) Create a profile

noto profile create "My Profile"
noto profile select "My Profile"

2) Configure a provider

noto provider set \
  --endpoint https://openrouter.ai/api/v1 \
  --key <YOUR_OPENROUTER_API_KEY> \
  --model openai/gpt-4o-mini

3) Select an embeddings model

In Settings (ctrl+j), pick Model Embeddings to enable memory retrieval.

Then start a chat session:

noto

Or start the browser workspace:

noto web

Open the printed http://127.0.0.1:8080 address. The web UI uses the active profile's existing provider, conversation history, notes, and weekly/monthly summaries. Provider setup must be completed in the terminal first. See the web GUI operations notes for localhost, lifecycle, and build details.

Profile reference files

Place reference documents directly in a profile's files/ directory; there is no upload command:

~/.noto/profiles/<profile>/files/artist/identity.pdf
~/.noto/profiles/<profile>/files/press/voice.md

Noto indexes PDF (selectable text only), TXT, and MD files on startup and profile changes, then chooses relevant files automatically for each chat turn. Scanned PDFs/OCR and images are not supported. Nested directories are scanned; symlinks are ignored. New files become available after the next startup or profile activation.

File contents are sent to your configured provider when indexed and when selected for a chat turn. Only a short file description is stored in the profile database; loaded text is temporary and is cleared on topic changes, restarts, and profile switches. Chat replies remain in history, but replies influenced by reference files are not automatically saved as memory notes. Provider-side prompt caching depends on the provider and does not guarantee deletion from its retention systems.

See the operations runbook for limits and failure behavior.

Version and updates

• Print current version:

noto version

• On startup, noto performs a non-blocking update check against GitHub Releases.
• In TUI mode, the current version is shown in the footer.