How Fibrae works
Last updated 15 September 2026
The short version
- You save things — links, notes, screenshots, video, or a thought you speak out loud.
- Fibrae suggests which ones belong together. You accept or ignore each suggestion.
- When a group has enough in it, Fibrae says so, and can turn that group into a first draft.
- The draft step is optional. Outline mode builds the same structure with no model involved at all.
- Everything is stored on your own device. There is no server holding your work, so there is nothing for us to lose, sell or hand over.
The problem it is actually for
Saving things is easy and everyone is good at it. You have a read-later app with four hundred articles in it, a notes app with fragments you do not remember writing, and a folder of screenshots. None of it has become anything.
The gap is not storage and it is not tagging. It is that nothing tells you when a pile of saved things has quietly become enough to write from. That is the one job Fibrae is built around. Everything else in it exists to serve that.
What happens, step by step
1. It lands as a card
Paste a link, type a thought, drop an image, or press the mic and say it. A link is read for its title, description and preview image so the card is recognisable later rather than being a naked URL. On a phone, Fibrae also sits in the share sheet, so “Share → Fibrae” puts something on your canvas without opening the app first.
2. It suggests what connects
When a card lands, Fibrae looks at what is already on the canvas and offers the ones it might belong with. It shows you why — the words or ideas they share — and nothing is connected until you say so. Dismissing the suggestion connects nothing.
Matching is by shared language out of the box. There is an optional “deeper matching” setting that downloads a small language model once, then runs it entirely inside your browser, which catches related ideas that happen to share no words. It is off by default.
3. It tells you when a cluster is ripe
Groups of connected cards are scored on how much is in them and how well they hold together. When a group crosses the line you set, it is marked ready. This is the part that does not exist in a notes app: something that volunteers “this is finishable now” instead of waiting for you to notice.
4. It becomes a first draft
Pick a ready cluster and Fibrae produces a document from it. Two rules hold here and do not bend:
Only the cluster you picked is ever used — not the rest of the canvas, not your other boards, nothing from outside. And writing it yourself is a first-class option, not a downgrade.
Can I use this without any AI?
Yes, completely, and it is the default setting rather than a buried preference.
Outline only builds the document structure on your own device from your own cards — headings, with your sources filed under each one, in the order the connections suggest. No network request is made. No model sees anything. It is a real working document that you then write into.
If you do want prose written for you, Fibrae has no model of its own and no API key of its own. You bring one:
| Mode | Where your cluster goes |
|---|---|
| Outline only (default) | Nowhere. Built on your device. No request is made. |
| On my computer | To a model running on your own machine via Ollama. Your browser talks to your computer and no further. |
| My own key | From your browser straight to Anthropic, using a key you paste in. It never touches our server. |
There is no fourth mode where your notes pass through us, because there is no server of ours for them to pass through.
Where does my work actually live?
On your device. By default, in your browser's own storage. If you point Fibrae at a folder,
every canvas becomes a plain .fibrae.json file in that folder, with images beside
it in attachments/.
There is no account holding your canvases, no sync, and no copy on our side. This is worth being blunt about in both directions: nothing of yours can leak from a server we do not have, and equally, nobody can restore your work for you if you clear your browser data without an export.
That is the trade. It is why the export button is always available, subscribed or not, and why pointing Fibrae at a real folder is the first thing worth doing.
How is this different from what I already use?
Honestly, for a lot of people the answer is that they should keep using what they have. Here is the comparison as plainly as we can put it.
| If you use… | It is better than Fibrae at… | Fibrae does this instead |
|---|---|---|
| A read-later app (Pocket, Instapaper, browser bookmarks) | Saving and reading. It is a better reader and a better queue. | Nothing about reading. It picks up after saving, when the pile needs to become an output. |
| Notion | Almost everything else — databases, collaboration, being one workspace for a team. | One job, with no setup. You do not design a system first; there is nothing to configure before the first card. |
| Obsidian | Long-term knowledge management, plugins, backlinks, and a far deeper feature set. | Telling you unprompted when a group is finishable. Obsidian shows you the graph; Fibrae is opinionated about what to do next. |
| A whiteboard (Miro, FigJam, tldraw) | Freeform drawing, real-time collaboration, workshops. | Reading what is on the board rather than just holding it, and a phone version that is not a shrunken desktop plane. |
| Pasting notes into a chatbot | Speed, for a one-off. Nothing to install. | Keeping the material between sessions, showing which cards a draft came from, and not requiring a model at all. |
When you should not use Fibrae
Stated plainly, because finding this out three weeks in is worse for everyone:
- You need collaboration. Fibrae is single-player. There is no sharing, no comments, no shared board, and none is planned soon.
- You want one app for everything. This is not a task manager, a calendar, a wiki or a database. It does one thing.
- You need your notes on every device, always in sync. Storing nothing on a server is what makes the privacy claim true, and it is also what makes sync impossible. You move files yourself.
- You have not actually got a backlog. If you are not already sitting on saved things you never came back to, the problem this solves is not a problem you have.
Common questions
Is it free?
Free for 14 days with no card asked for, then $5.99 a month. Nothing charges automatically at the end of the trial — there is no subscription quietly starting that you have to remember to cancel. If you never subscribe, Fibrae writes every canvas out to a folder you keep, and the export button works whether or not you pay.
Does it work offline?
Yes. Capturing, connecting, searching and building outlines all work with no network at all. The two things that need one are reading a pasted link's title and, if you have turned it on, a model writing prose.
Do I need an account?
No. There is one optional Google sign-in whose only job is letting a subscription be recognised on a device that has never seen it. “Continue without an account” is on the same screen, and everything works after it.
Can I get my work out?
Every canvas exports as one JSON file, and any draft exports as Markdown. If you connected a folder, your canvases are already plain files you can open in a text editor without Fibrae existing. Nothing needs our permission to leave.
Is my voice recording sent anywhere?
Fibrae uses your browser's own speech recognition and only while you have the mic switched on. No audio reaches us and nothing is stored. Note that on some browsers — Chrome in particular — that built-in engine does its transcription in the cloud. That is the browser's arrangement with you rather than ours, which is why the mic is press-to-use rather than always listening, and why typing is always there instead.
What does it run on?
Any modern browser, on a computer or a phone, plus an Android app. Connecting a folder needs a Chromium-based browser; everywhere else it falls back to browser storage and export.
Try it on something you already saved
The honest test takes about ten minutes: open it, paste in five or six things you have been meaning to do something with, and see whether the connections it suggests are ones you would have made. If they are not, you will know quickly and you will not have paid anything.