English | 日本語
Scribbles, auto-organized.
Press Option+Space and a sticky note floats up. Write down whatever you were thinking, as-is. Press the Organize button once. AI turns it into a title, key points, and a checklist. That's the whole thing.
- Public repository: https://github.com/tomarai85/flote
- Official site: https://flote-app.vercel.app (= full install steps + roadmap)
- Parent brand: a Direct product
- License: FSL-1.1-ALv2 (= converts to Apache 2.0 after 2 years)
- Security: report vulnerabilities via SECURITY.md
- Status: 14-day free trial → $9 one-time purchase (no subscription, no card up front) / macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later / Apple Silicon
Most note apps are built for people who are good at organizing. Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes — all of them assume you can design tags, draw hierarchies, and link things together.
Not everyone is that person. Some of us just want to get a thought down somewhere before it evaporates. Organizing can wait (= really, we don't want to think about it at all). Until now, there hasn't been a notes app built for that person.
Flote exists to fill that gap.
- Launches in 2 seconds (resident app); Option+Space floats a 160px sticky note onto your desktop
- The Organize button lets AI structure your scribble (title / key points / action list)
- Notes are stored only on your Mac, encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, never sent to the cloud (= on-device AI is the default; the only network traffic happens if you opt into Claude or Gemini). No telemetry, no analytics SDK
- Native SwiftUI + AppKit. Not Electron
An organized notebook, for people who can't organize.
The fastest path is the official site:
→ https://flote-website.vercel.app
Direct download (= signed + notarized dmg, GitHub Releases):
→ https://github.com/tomarai85/flote/releases/latest/download/Flote.dmg
- Open the dmg
- Drag Flote into Applications
- Launch it (= Apple Developer ID signed + notarized, so it opens with no warning)
After first launch:
- A Flote icon appears in the menu bar
- Press
Option + Spaceto float a sticky note - Write something, then hit Organize for AI structuring
AI Organize needs no separate install: on Apple Intelligence-capable Macs (= macOS 26+), on-device Apple Foundation Models runs by default. On Macs without it, a bundled local model (Qwen 2.5, 4-bit MLX, Apple Silicon only, ~880MB) downloads once on first use and runs offline after that. For longer or more involved notes, you can optionally add a Claude or Gemini API key in Settings to route through the cloud.
Updates: the built-in Sparkle framework checks automatically (= or check manually via menu bar Flote → Check for Updates).
cd apps/macos
open Flote.xcodeproj # Xcode 16+ / Swift 5.10+
Press Cmd + R to run. Dev builds that use an API key go through the Settings UI into Keychain storage (= the old DevSecrets.swift fallback is gitignored and not part of the public repo).
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Resident + floating sticky note | Menu-bar resident; Option+Space floats a 160px sticky note over any app |
| AI Organize | One button turns a scribble into a title / key points / checkbox action list. On-device AI (Apple Foundation Models / bundled local model) by default; optionally switch to Claude / Gemini API |
| Learning classifier | The more you use it, the more Flote learns your classification patterns and auto-sorts notes into Groups |
| Inbox batch classify | Sort a whole backlog of unclassified notes with one button, emptying the Inbox |
| Undo | Don't like the Organize result? Cmd+Z reverts to the scribble |
| Custom shortcuts | Rebind the keys for New Note / Show Groups / Archive |
| Data stays on your Mac | Notes are stored locally, encrypted with AES-256-GCM. No telemetry. Network traffic only happens if you use cloud AI (Claude/Gemini) (= fully offline when using on-device AI) |
See the Before/After section on the site for detailed usage: https://flote-website.vercel.app
Flote is released as source-available:
- Allowed right now (= Permitted Purpose):
- Personal use (= running it yourself as an end user on your own Mac)
- Internal use (= distributing it to employees / contractors within your company or lab)
- Non-commercial education / research
- Reading the source, modifying it, maintaining your own fork
- Not allowed (= Competing Use):
- Hosting Flote as a SaaS / commercial product for third parties
- Building a commercial product that duplicates Flote's functionality
- After 2 years (= from 2028-05-27): automatically converts to Apache License 2.0 (= the Functional Source License's future-grant clause)
Full details in LICENSE.md. "FSL-1.1-ALv2" is synonymous with "FSL-1.1-Apache-2.0" (= ALv2 = Apache License Version 2.0).
- MIT / Apache from day one: can't stop someone forking it and selling the same thing under a different brand
- AGPL: reads as "hard to use" to the community (= forces full source disclosure on every derivative product)
- Fully closed: gives up the transparency / trust that matters for solo indie development
- FSL sits between those three. A 2-year protection window followed by automatic OSS conversion gets "indie development speed + protection from copycats + long-term community payback" at the same time
- Open-sourced (source-available) on GitHub under FSL-1.1-ALv2
- Added GitHub link + free-beta narrative + pre-launch email waitlist to the site
- Free beta continues (= ¥0 for now, no end date)
- Apple Developer Program enrollment + proper signing + notarization complete (= from v1.0), notarized dmg distributed via GitHub Releases + Sparkle auto-update
- AI Organize rebuilt around on-device Apple Foundation Models (macOS 26+) + a bundled local model (Qwen 2.5 MLX), dropping the Ollama dependency. Added Gemini as a second BYO-key cloud option alongside Claude
- After awareness grows (= GitHub stars / DAU / AI search hits, whichever comes first), consider a ~¥300 paid tier for new users
- Grandfathering existing free users is a separate decision, deferred to Phase 2
- One benchmark for pricing timing: "once Flote is findable via AI search"
- Waitlist emails actually going out (= evaluating Loops / ConvertKit / Buttondown)
- Flutter-based Windows build
- Settings sync (= across multiple Macs / Mac+Windows)
- iOS exploration (= after Helix iOS's delivery path is settled)
- The site currently opts out of search indexing via
robots.txt+X-Robots-Tag: noindex(=website/vercel.json) - This is a deliberate Phase 1 stance: not ready for the site to be found via AI search / Google yet — word of mouth inside the Mac dev community first
- Opening up discoverability is a separate Phase 2 decision (= likely to land around the same time as the ¥300 pricing decision above)
During Phase 1, this repo is issues only:
- Bug reports / feature requests / usability feedback → GitHub Issues are very welcome
- Pull requests → closed for now. PR review reopens once the license auto-converts to Apache 2.0 in 2 years
Why:
- Phase 1 is for locking in brand voice / design intent
- One solo developer doesn't have the bandwidth to review PRs
- Once Apache 2.0 lands, forking + community-driven development becomes possible
For urgent security reports, contact directly rather than filing an Issue.
- Flote is a Direct product. Direct is a portfolio of native Mac tools built and run solo by Tomonori Arai (荒井 知憲). Sibling product: Helix (= privacy-first Chromium-fork browser)
- Scribble-structuring AI runs on-device by default (= Apple's Foundation Models framework, or a bundled local model, Qwen 2.5 / MLX, on Macs without it). Optionally add a Claude (Anthropic) or Gemini (Google) API key for cloud processing
- Updates are delivered via the Sparkle framework
- Site: https://flote-website.vercel.app
- Direct (= parent): https://direct-homepage.vercel.app
- Author: Tomonori Arai (= 荒井 知憲) -- @TomArai85 on X (= personal brand)
- License: FSL-1.1-ALv2
- This README is maintained in both languages: 日本語