Updates

This release makes linked folders full-fledged editors, lets you rearrange and move document tabs, rename a document from its title, and pick several files at once — plus a calendar fix and two Cloud Sync fixes.

Added

• Linked folders are now full editors — a folder you link from outside your Home (a project folder, a work folder, big files) now edits its Markdown files just like your Home notes. The slash (/) block menu, the right-click editing menu, the document-options menu (open in default app, reveal it in your file manager, copy path, collapse/expand all), and greyed-out broken relative links all work. Its properties (frontmatter) show as a read-only view — linked folders have no version history, so there is nothing to undo an accidental edit with. Right-clicking in the tree gives the same menu as Home: new note, new folder, rename in place, and delete. Pasting or dragging in an image saves it into that folder's own attachments folder, not your Home. (Wiki [[ ]] links stay as plain text outside Home, on purpose.)
• Open linked notes in a split or a new window, and bookmark them — a linked .md can open in a second pane beside another document or in its own window, and you can bookmark any file, folder, or a linked folder itself. Bookmarks for linked items live in their own list, separate from Home bookmarks, so same-named files don't clash.
• Rename a document from its title — click the file name at the top of an editor and it turns into a text box; type a new name and press Enter. The .md is hidden while you edit and re-attached when you save. Open tabs, the title, the path shown beneath it, the file tree on the left, and links pointing at the document all follow the new name. Works for both Home notes and linked-folder notes. (Task and project documents, and learning notes, are left out — their name is their identifier.)
• Rearrange and move document tabs — drag a document tab left or right to reorder it (a small drag starts it, so a plain click still just switches tabs). When the screen is split in two, you can drag a tab into the other pane; move a pane's last tab out and the split folds back on its own, with the remaining pane taking the whole screen.
• Pick several files at once in the file tree — hold Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) and click to add a file to a selection without opening it (click it again to remove it); Shift+click selects a run, and Ctrl+Shift+click adds a second run. Then delete them together — or, in the Files tab, move them or group them into a new folder. This works in all three tabs: Files, Bookmarks, and Linked folders. Deleting a file also removes its bookmark, so the Bookmarks tab no longer keeps a dead shortcut.
• The guided tour got smarter (beta) — opening a tour chapter now switches the screen to its stage for you, and the tour card slides aside when it would cover the button it is pointing at. The "same work in six views" chapter now points you to write a first line when there is nothing in that area to show yet, instead of flipping through empty views.

Fixed

• Double-clicking a task in the calendar could open a different one — double-clicking a task in the calendar (or in Today's timetable, the preview panel, or the undated tray) could open an entirely different task. Kempt now opens the task by its file, which is unique, so you always get the one you clicked — and new task numbers no longer reuse one that already exists in a project.
• Renaming a note could leave a "zombie" copy behind — renaming a note that other notes link to, then undoing the rename, could bring the file back at its old path, leaving you with both the original and a stray copy. Undo now moves the open tab to the restored path and the old file stays gone. This also applies to renames done from the file tree.
• Cloud Sync no longer makes runaway duplicate copies (beta) — with two devices syncing, editing one note without stopping could pile up dozens of "conflict copy" duplicates of it. The root cause is fixed — the app was recording a fingerprint of what it had just scanned instead of what it actually uploaded, so the other device kept re-flagging the note as changed — and the receiving device now re-checks what it really received. Your original note and every edit are kept.
• Cloud Sync won't quietly merge a different set of notes (beta) — signing into the same account on a second computer that holds a different folder of notes used to merge the two together with no warning. Kempt now notices the folders don't match and stops to ask; by default it keeps this computer's folder local (sync stays off) so nothing gets mixed, and merging is offered as a deliberate choice.

A big release: undo for the things you delete, a guided tour, and three editor bugs that were silently losing text.

Added

• Undo a delete with Ctrl+Z — delete something by mistake and a small toast appears with an Undo button; one Ctrl+Z puts it back, including everything nested inside it. It covers tasks, goals, notes, files, folders, canvases, and whole projects and areas, and deleting several things at once still undoes in a single Ctrl+Z. Archiving a task (with everything under it) is undoable the same way. A few places are not covered yet: saved views, events deleted from the event inspector, scheduled runs, and skills deleted in the Learning panel — those are permanent, and a deleted skill can only be brought back from version history.
• Deleted items get a grace period — a delete now waits up to 10 minutes, or until you quit the app, before it goes to the system Trash (the Recycle Bin on Windows). While it waits, Cloud Sync does not push it, so undoing a delete leaves nothing behind in the cloud (beta). The flip side: a delete you keep can take up to those 10 minutes to disappear on your other devices.
• A guided tour of the app (beta) — the compass in the left rail opens a tour with a checklist of nine chapters. Two of them are live so far — writing your first line, and seeing the same work in six views: those spotlight the actual button on screen and tick themselves off as you do the thing for real. The other seven are written instructions for now. Nothing in it is sample data: everything you make during the tour is your own work, and you can reset your progress and start over.
• Day planner in the Today sidebar — the Today panel now switches between List and Timetable. The timetable is today's hour grid: drag a to-do from the all-day row down onto an hour and it gets that time, snapped to 15 minutes (and undoable with Ctrl+Z).
• Drag an all-day item onto the calendar to give it a time — in week and day view, drag an item from the all-day row into the hour grid and it picks up that time, snapped to 15 minutes. Multi-day and repeating items are refused, with a reason — giving them a single time would quietly wipe out their range.
• Plain-text copy and paste — Ctrl+Shift+C copies just the visible words, so pasting into Word or an email carries no formatting. Ctrl+Shift+V pastes text in as-is, with no formatting and no stray Markdown symbols. Plain Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V are unchanged. Both are listed under Settings → Hotkeys.
• Insert images and PDFs from your computer — picking Image or PDF from the slash (/) menu now opens your file browser instead of asking for a web address, and copies the file into your attachments folder just as if you had dragged it in. Adding one by URL is still there as its own item.
• Right-click inside the calendar's "+N more" — items in the "+N more" popover now behave like any other chip: right-click for the full menu, and in month view you can drag one onto another day to reschedule it.
• Delete and refresh in the file tree — select something in the Docs file tree and press Del to send it to the trash, with a confirmation that names the file. A refresh button in the tree header re-reads the folder whenever you want.
• A Fast speed tier for AI chats (beta) — the AI settings chip has a new Speed section offering whatever faster tier your provider gives you. On Codex that is Fast: quicker replies that use up your quota faster. It is off by default, set per conversation, shown as a ⚡ badge while it is on, and deliberately unavailable to scheduled runs. Not every model offers a tier — the section only appears when yours does.
• See and cancel a scheduled plan change (beta) — Settings → Account now keeps showing that your plan changes on a given date, marks the plan you are moving to as pending, and gives you a Keep this plan button to cancel it.
• A free month on your first subscription (beta) — Cloud Sync now starts with a 1-month free trial, once per customer, with a card required at checkout. Refunds are pro-rated for the unused period.

Fixed

• Opening a note and pressing Ctrl+Z could erase the whole note — pressing Ctrl+Z in a freshly opened document, without typing anything, wiped its entire contents — and the empty version was then saved to disk. This affected every editor that saves: notes, pages, task bodies, and linked external files. Ctrl+Z in a document you have not edited now correctly does nothing, and your own edits still undo normally.
• Delete on a blank line inside a list item deleted the whole item — with the cursor on an empty line inside a bulleted or numbered item, pressing Delete removed the entire item, sentence and all, and the text was genuinely gone from the file. Now only the blank line goes and the line below moves up, leaving headings, code blocks, checkboxes, and nesting intact.
• Tab indented the wrong item, and Shift+Tab could erase a checkbox — with the cursor on a bullet nested under a checkbox, Tab indented the outer checkbox item instead of the bullet you were on, and Shift+Tab silently deleted the checkbox marker from the file. Both now move exactly the item the cursor is in, and do nothing rather than destroy structure when there is nowhere to go.
• Ctrl+Z in a note could undo something on a board instead — with an undo toast showing on a board, the board quietly grabbed Ctrl+Z (and Ctrl+Shift+Z) even while you were typing in a note. Undo now always belongs to whatever you are actually working in.
• Renaming a folder brought the old one back — renaming or moving a folder while one of its notes was open recreated the old folder and saved your latest text into it, leaving two folders with the newest content stuck in the wrong one. Open tabs, titles, bookmarks and unsaved text now follow the note to its new home, and the old folder stays gone.
• Notes on a canvas went blank after a rename — a note placed on a canvas lost track of its file when you renamed or moved it, and the card showed an empty note, as if the content were lost. Canvas cards now follow renames and moves, and a card whose file really is gone says "file not found" with the path.
• Some tasks could get stuck — a task could end up orphaned from its project, so you could not change its status, archive it, or delete it, and the task detail showed a raw id where the project should be. A task's folder now decides which project it belongs to, so it can always be edited, and the display heals itself.
• Cloud Sync no longer stutters every five seconds (beta) — with Cloud Sync on, the app hitched roughly every five seconds while you typed or dragged, above all because one large file in your Home was being read in full on every cycle. A quiet sync cycle is now essentially free: it does not re-read your files, downloads nothing, and stops flooding the interface with updates — all it does is ask the server whether anything changed.
• Dragging and editing stopped stuttering (even without Cloud Sync) — dragging a card in Project Map, moving a task to another project, and saving a note could each make the app hitch on their own. Seven fixes cut the work those kick off: a drag now only rewrites the cards it actually moved, wiki-link lookups no longer scan every note, Project Map only redraws the card you touched, and the tidying-up after each change no longer runs several times over.
• Cloud Sync could lose an area's encryption key (beta) — two devices setting up areas at the same time could overwrite each other's keys, which would leave that area's files in the cloud permanently unreadable. Key uploads now merge instead of overwriting, and Kempt refuses to upload at all if it cannot read what is already there.
• Cloud Sync made duplicate copies of your own items (beta) — sync could mistake this computer for a different device and pile up "conflict copy" duplicates of items whose only real difference was a save timestamp, showing as repeated rows in List and Timeline. Those false conflicts no longer happen, stray conflict copies are kept out of your task views, and genuine conflict copies are named in your app's language.
• Renaming a folder set off the mass-delete warning (beta) — sync saw a folder rename as "delete N files, create N files", which tripped the mass-delete confirmation. It now recognises a rename as a move, so renaming no longer counts as deleting.
• The AI ignored the model and effort level you picked — a newer Codex model or a stronger effort level could be silently thrown away: asking for the strongest setting quietly ran the weakest, and picking a cheaper model quietly ran the most expensive. Kempt now trusts the list your provider actually reports, so new models work the day they appear, and it tells you when a value has to be dropped. Scheduled runs were hit hardest and are fixed too — new ones on Codex now default to GPT-5.6 Terra instead of GPT-5.5.
• AI chat history came back mangled after a restart — restarting flattened a conversation into a wall of plain text, with tool cards and question cards gone. Conversations now come back with their tool runs, question and plan cards, and original order intact.
• Files the AI created did not show up — a file the AI made stayed invisible in the Docs file tree until you restarted. New files now appear as they are written, plus a guaranteed refresh at the end of every AI turn.
• Two tasks could end up with the same number — creating tasks at the same moment, especially when the AI made several subtasks at once, could hand out the same task number twice. Numbers are now handed out one at a time, so every task gets its own.
• The context meter was wrong for both AI providers — the "how full is this conversation" badge read far too high on Codex (so it warned you far too early) and far too low on Claude (so it almost never warned you at all). It is now measured from what the provider actually reports, and warns at 70% and 90%. The session token total next to it was also double-counting on Codex, and is correct now too.
• Codex users were told to run claude — several messages still named Claude, including a sign-in warning and an offer to install Claude Code. The wording now follows whichever AI you actually have active. Nothing changes for Claude users.
• The app kept seeing an old version of Codex — updating Codex did not take effect. Kempt now looks in Codex's official install location, so restarting the app is enough to pick up the new version.
• 15-minute events looked identical to 30-minute ones — the calendar drew them at the same height, so shortening an event below 30 minutes looked like it did nothing (it was saving correctly all along). Hour rows are now twice as tall, 15 minutes reads as exactly half of 30, and the column lines line up with the all-day row.
• Cancelling a subscription left the app telling you to "try again" (beta) — with a cancellation scheduled, changing plans showed a "try again" error that could never work. The plan buttons are now locked up front, with an explanation pointing you to the Manage button on your account row, and the badge honestly reads "Canceling", with the end date on its own line below it.
• Missing embedded notes pretended to be fine — embedding a note that does not exist showed a normal-looking empty card. It now clearly marks the note as missing, and embeds that do exist open when you click them.
• The slash menu was cut off, drifted, and hid your selection — the / menu, and the [[ link and # tag menus, got clipped at the bottom of the screen, stayed put when you scrolled, and scrolled the highlighted item out of sight with the arrow keys. All three now flip upward when there is no room, stay attached to the character you typed, and keep the selected item visible.
• Left rail icons did not light up — the rail now highlights the icon for the screen you are actually on, including journal entries, canvases, and Learning.
• Smaller editor and popup fixes — the cursor and the "write here" placeholder line up in an empty document, popup menus are readable again in light mode, the New document dropdown no longer runs off the edge of the screen, short documents scroll far enough that the line you are typing sits at eye level, and the HTML embed box is a proper multi-line field.

Changed

• Deleting a note that is open now closes its tab — including its copy in the split pane, and any unsaved text in it. Before, the open editor could quietly write the file back to disk after you had deleted it.
• Closing an AI chat tab no longer archives it — right-clicking a chat tab to close it used to file the conversation straight into the archive, with no confirmation. Closing now just closes the tab; the conversation stays in the active list, one click from reopening, and archiving is a deliberate button in the history panel. Restoring an archived conversation now moves it back to the active list rather than opening it — click it there to reopen.
• Cloud version history no longer saves a version per keystroke (beta) — with sync on, a version was stored every few seconds of typing, so ten minutes of writing produced dozens of them. It now keeps one version per editing session (about three minutes), so the list is readable. Versions older than your plan's retention period are honestly labelled as no longer stored, instead of looking like a failure.
• Area drafts now live in the area's own Inbox — tasks you create in an area without picking a project collect in an _inbox folder inside that area, instead of sitting loose in its root. Existing ones move there once, automatically, the first time you open the app. The "Unassigned" group in List and Board is now called Inbox and sits at the top.
• Creating a calendar item is now a deliberate act — left-clicking an empty slot no longer pops open a create dialog; a stray click while scrolling used to be enough. Right-click → Add here now uses the exact time you clicked, snapped to 15 minutes, rather than always making an all-day item.
• All-day items in week and day view are no longer collapsed — the all-day row grows to show every item instead of hiding the rest behind "+9 more". Month view still collapses, since its rows have a fixed height.
• Rename files in the tree without a dialog — right-click → Rename now edits the name in place, like your file manager does. The file extension stays protected.
• Canvas asks for a name first — the canvas button in the left rail asks for a name before creating anything, instead of quietly piling up "Untitled Canvas 2, 3, 4…" every time it is misclicked.
• Right sidebar tabs reordered — the default order when viewing documents is now AI Chat, Today, Journal, Outline, Links, Local Graph, Tags, Properties — everyday tools first. If you have already dragged them into your own order, that is kept.
• Tidier account settings (beta) — a scheduled plan change gets its own line under the subscription badge, and the duplicate Manage button under the plan cards is gone.

A small fixes release focused on the note editor and file tree.

Fixed

• Pasting a link no longer breaks the editor — pasting an external URL into a note used to freeze it into an uneditable block. Links now paste as normal, clickable links, and notes that already got stuck open correctly again.
• Delete key in an empty list item — with the cursor in an empty bullet or numbered item, pressing Delete now pulls the next line up onto it, as expected.
• Journal dates stay in sync — journal entry dates no longer drift between devices, and slightly different date formats are read correctly.
• Cloud Sync safeguard (beta) — a stronger guard keeps personal-only items from leaking into shared areas.

Changed

• Files in the tree open on double-click — a single click on a file that opens in an external app (anything other than a Markdown note or Canvas) now just selects it; double-click opens it. This applies to linked external folders too.

Kempt is now in open beta — anyone can download it, and everything you do lands as plain Markdown you own.

Added

• Plain mode for the AI — a per-chat toggle that tells Claude to ignore everything it has learned, just for that conversation. Your skills and memory on disk stay untouched.
• Encrypted sync, wider (beta) — Cloud Sync now also carries your AI chat history, global AI instructions, archived items, and renamed or moved areas across your devices, end-to-end encrypted.
• Goals you can click — click a goal to narrow a view to its work; right-click to edit, archive, or delete. The sidebar shows the goal-to-project-to-task hierarchy more clearly.
• Schedules pick their AI — a scheduled run can use a specific provider, and warns you if it is not installed or signed in.
• External-agent files are opt-in — Kempt only writes AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md for terminal agents when you turn it on, and cleans them up when you turn it off (off by default).

Fixed

• Project Map: subtasks no longer drift out when you collapse, multi-drag no longer throws a "cycle" error, and collapse state is kept.
• Deleting a whole area or project folder clears the index at once, with no ghost rows left in rollups.
• Scheduled runs can read your vault again.
• New area and project descriptions now seed in your app's language.

Note — the Windows installer is code-signed; SmartScreen may still warn until reputation builds (More info → Run anyway). Cloud Sync and native mobile are still in progress.

A big update focused on learning, notes, and everyday polish.

Added

• Learning you can see — Claude can now turn a chat into reusable skills and memory. Open the new Learning panel (🎓) to review, approve, archive, or delete what it learned, grouped by area. A built-in canvas guide ships with the app. Nothing is saved without you seeing it first.
• Preview a task's note in the sidebar — single-click a task and the right sidebar's new Preview tab shows its note read-only, so you can glance at one task while working on another. Editing still happens in the center.
• "Open note" from edit dialogs — open the underlying markdown note of a task, project, or area as a Docs tab.
• Search is its own screen — search now lives in the left rail with a file tree beside it.
• Copy button on code blocks — hover a code block in the editor to copy it.
• Version history for tasks, goals, and projects — not just notes. AI edits are now reliably tagged as "AI edit."
• Scheduled runs, expanded — see each schedule's past runs, give a schedule its own AI model/provider, and attach @context notes.
• More AI models — Fable 5 and Sonnet 5 added to the model picker.

Changed

• Linked folders: just drag — drop a folder onto the Linked folders tab to link it, no Ctrl needed. (The Files tab still copies on drop.)
• Settings reorganized — Version history moved to Files, Notifications to AI.

Fixed

• The area home (Overview) no longer overlaps its sections on a small window.
• The thin strip that reappeared when the right sidebar auto-collapsed is gone.
• Clicking a document in the search screen's file tree now opens it.

Fixed

• The built-in AI (Claude) could fail to start right after updating — "Claude Code native binary … failed to launch." Kempt now launches its bundled Claude correctly, so AI works again. (If you prefer your own installed Claude, that still takes priority.)

Added

• Update prompt — when a new version is downloaded, Kempt shows a small "A new version is ready — Restart" prompt in the corner instead of waiting silently. Nothing is forced: restart when you like, or it applies the next time you close the app.
• Kempt now also checks for updates while it stays open, so windows left running for a long time don't miss them.

A large update gathering everything built since the first beta.

Added

• Cloud Sync (beta) — end-to-end encrypted sync of your notes and workspaces across devices, protected by a master password and a recovery code. Turn it on for your whole home, or area by area, in Settings → Sync. Needs a Sync plan.
• Accounts — sign in with email or Google to enable Sync and manage your plan right inside the app.
• Cloud version history — view and restore earlier cloud revisions of a note from the version history panel.
• Choose your AI — switch the assistant between Claude and Codex (OpenAI) from the chat bar, and pick the model and effort from one control.
• Richer AI chat — mention notes and folders as inline chips, clearer turn separators, and Shift+Enter for newlines.
• Unified right-click menus — the same context menu now works across Today, Board, Calendar, Timeline, and Project Map.

Fixed

• Login no longer drops every time you restart the app.
• Tasks the AI creates now appear immediately in the current view.
• Many smaller fixes to mention search, live context accuracy, and AI provider switching.

First private beta. The complete Kempt desktop app:

• Your notes, tasks, projects, goals, and events, all as plain Markdown on your own computer.
• See the same work as Today, Calendar, Board, List, Timeline, and Project Map. Projects are a filter, not another silo.
• Obsidian-grade knowledge built in: wikilinks, backlinks, graph, infinite canvas, daily journal, tags, and properties.
• Optional AI that runs on your own Claude. Turn it off and Kempt works exactly the same, fully offline.
• Local version history with automatic snapshots, plus safe atomic writes so your files are never half-saved.

Windows 10 and 11 for now. macOS is coming soon.