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mindly

Your second brain powered by AI. Organize thoughts, connect ideas, and unlock your mind's potential.

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Chat With Your Documents

Ask Your Documents Anything

Open any document, PDF, note, or saved article in Mindly and ask. The AI answers with that item as its context, so you can question your own files in plain language, and Mindly surfaces the other saves it recognizes as related.

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How it works

How chatting with your documents works

  1. Open any item in your library, a note, a PDF, a saved article, or a transcript, and start a chat. The item becomes the context for the conversation, so the AI answers about what is actually in front of you.
  2. Ask in plain language: summarize this, what does it say about a topic, pull the key points, explain this section, draft a reply. The answer is grounded in the item, not in generic knowledge.
  3. Mindly recognizes the context of what you are reading and surfaces the other saves it judges related, so a question about one item points you to the others that bear on it.
  4. Keep the useful answers. Chat responses can be saved back into your library as their own items, tagged and searchable like everything else.

When to use it

What chatting with your own items is for

Question a long PDF

Open a paper or report and ask what it concludes, what it says about a topic, or for a plain-language summary, without reading every page.

Interrogate a note

Ask your own note to expand, clarify, or draft from it, with the note as the context so the answer stays on point.

Pull from a saved article

Ask a saved article for its key claims or how it relates to something else you are working on.

Find the related ones

While you chat with one item, Mindly surfaces the contextually similar saves, so a single question opens the whole thread you have on a subject.



Why it works

What context-aware AI changes

Answers grounded in your item

The chat runs with the open item as its context, so responses come from what you actually saved rather than from generic training data. You can trust that a summary is of your PDF and an answer is about your note, not a plausible-sounding guess.

Context recognition surfaces the rest

Mindly reads the context of what you are working with and surfaces the other saves it recognizes as related, so chatting with one item quietly brings forward the connected ones you would otherwise have forgotten you had.

Every format is chattable

Because Mindly already reads PDFs, transcribes voice, and extracts text from images, you can chat with a recording or a scanned document just as easily as a typed note. The AI works across everything in the library, not only plain text.

Your material stays on your Mac

Your library lives in a folder on your Mac. AI processing runs over encrypted channels and content is not retained on Mindly servers after the request, so you can question confidential material without it being stored on a vendor cloud.

Why it matters

Why chatting in context beats a generic chatbot

A general chatbot knows the public internet but not your library, so it cannot answer questions about the paper you saved or the note you wrote. Mindly puts the AI inside your own material: every answer is grounded in the item you opened and connected to the related saves around it, which turns your library from a place you store things into a place you can question.


Common questions

Chat with your documents FAQ

Can I chat with my PDFs and documents in Mindly?

Yes. Open any PDF, document, note, saved article, or transcript and start a chat, and the AI answers using that item as its context. You can ask for a summary, pull key points, ask what it says about a topic, or draft from it, all grounded in the item rather than in generic knowledge.

How is this different from using a general chatbot?

A general chatbot does not know your library, so it cannot answer questions about the specific paper or note you saved. Mindly runs the AI in the context of your own items, so answers come from your material and are connected to the related saves around it.

What is context recognition?

When you open or chat with an item, Mindly recognizes its context and surfaces other saves it judges related by meaning. It is how a question about one item points you to the connected ones, so your library behaves like a thread of related thinking rather than a flat list.

Can I chat with voice notes and scanned documents?

Yes. Mindly transcribes voice and extracts text from images and scanned PDFs, so those become chattable like any typed note. You can ask a recording or a scanned page the same questions you would ask a document.

Is my content kept private when I chat?

Your library lives in a folder on your Mac. AI features run over cloud model APIs, which means content is sent for processing over encrypted channels, but it is not retained on Mindly servers after the request completes. You can question sensitive material without it being stored on a vendor cloud.

Can I save the AI answers?

Yes. Useful chat responses can be kept as their own items in your library, where they are tagged and searchable like everything else, so a good answer becomes part of your second brain instead of disappearing when you close the chat.


Also in Mindly

Explore more

Auto-organize

Organized The Second You Save.

Suggestions

Smart Nudges, Not Notifications.

Search

If You Saved It, You Can Find It.


Related reading

Guides from the blog

Guide

How to Build a Second Brain

Guide

Build a Personal Search Engine

Guide

Why Your Second Brain Is Not Working

Get started

Ask your own library a question

Download Mindly free for Mac, open a PDF or a note, and chat with it. The answer comes from your material, and the related saves come with it.

Download freeSee pricing