A private second brain that isn’t training anyone’s model.
The researcher pastes notes from meetings, research papers and book highlights into Edge over time. Persistent memory builds an evolving model of their knowledge base. When drafting a synthesis document, Edge surfaces relevant context from months of input, none of it sitting on a cloud provider’s training dataset.
Run Edge- 1
Describe the task
A second brain is only useful if you trust it with everything, and that trust breaks the moment your half-formed ideas become a cloud provider’s training data. Edge keeps the whole knowledge base on the researcher’s own phone. The notes, paper highlights, and book excerpts you paste in accrete into an evolving memory of what you know, and none of it ever seeds anyone else’s model.
Tell Edge which Space holds the material, what you’re synthesising, and what to cite, and it draws the relevant threads from months of pasted input, all sourced locally.
Open my Cognition Space and draft a synthesis on attention and memory consolidation. - Draw on everything I’ve pasted in over the past months: notes, paper highlights, book excerpts - Pull the strongest supporting passages and cite which note or paper each came from - Note where my own sources disagree with each other - Draft a first-pass synthesis that starts to build an argument, for me to sharpen Everything stays local, none of this belongs in a training set.
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Give Edge context
Paste into one Space continuously, meeting notes, highlights you’ve copied out, book passages, and let it grow. Edge’s memory indexes it all on-device, so when you sit down to write, the relevant context from months ago surfaces with a local citation instead of a vague half-memory.
The more you tag sources as you paste (author, paper, date), the cleaner Edge’s citations. A synthesis is only trustworthy if every claim traces back to a real note you can find again.
Required contextA Space you’ve been pasting into over time, notes, highlights, excerptsA synthesis brief, the question or argument you want the draft to makeOptional contextConsistent source tags on each paste, so Edge cites author and paper preciselyA prior synthesis pasted into the Space, Edge builds on it rather than starting freshA target length and tone note, so the draft lands closer to publishablePaper highlights (pasted)Reading notes (typed)Prior synthesis (pasted) - 3
What Edge creates
Edge draws the relevant passages from months of pasted input, cites each back to its source note, surfaces where your own sources disagree, and drafts a first-pass synthesis you can sharpen, entirely from a local knowledge base that never leaves your phone.
From Edge: Drafted a first-pass synthesis from 148 pasted notes in the Cognition Space, none of it cloud-stored.
MonthsOf input, never sent to cloud148Local notes drawn on31Passages cited to sourceStrongest supporting passages31 citedClaim Source note Strength Consolidation favours spaced review Kessler 2019 highlights Strong Attention gates what gets encoded Reading notes, Ch. 4 Strong Sleep reactivation is selective Aduba review highlights Moderate Where sources disagree2 tensionsTension Sources Whether interference is capacity-based or time-based Kessler 2019 vs. Marchetti notes Role of emotion in consolidation strength Aduba review vs. book excerpt, Ch. 7 "Three highlights were untagged, so I cited them by paste date rather than author, worth back-filling if you want cleaner references. Want me to expand the disagreement section into its own passage, or tighten the argument first?"
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Follow-up prompts
Turn the synthesis into an outline for writing
Ask Edge to reshape the draft into a section-by-section outline with the cited passages slotted under each argument, so you can write from structure instead of a blank page, all still local.
Reshape this synthesis into a writing outline: one section per sub-argument, with the supporting passages and their sources listed under each. Keep it in this Space.
Surface what you haven’t read yet
Edge can flag gaps in your own base, arguments you assert but never sourced, so you know what to read next before you publish, based only on what’s in your Space.
List claims in this synthesis that aren’t backed by a source note in my Space. These are gaps I should read into before publishing.
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Tips and troubleshooting
Tag sources as you paste
A citation is only useful if you can find the note again. Prefix each paste with author, paper, and date, and Edge’s syntheses come out with references you can actually chase, not a wall of unattributed claims.
Let the base grow before you synthesise
The value compounds. A Space with months of input produces syntheses that connect ideas you’d forgotten were related, keep pasting, and let Edge find the threads when you sit down to write.
Ready to try it yourself?
Build a private, evolving knowledge base that draws months of your own pasted thinking into cited draft syntheses, without a single note ever landing in someone else’s training set.
Run Edge