A notepad that remembers the sky
Umbriel's notepad is an ordinary place to write things down: a thought, a list, a dream, the notes you take while you work on a chart. The difference is that every note quietly keeps the sky it was written under, so years from now you can ask your own notes what the sky was doing when you wrote them.
What you can write
A note has a title and some text, and that is all it needs. You can pin the ones you want at the top, give them tags, and go back to the last ten versions of a note if you changed your mind. A note you throw away goes to a trash, and you can put it back.
Lists work the way you would hope. Start a line as a checklist item and it becomes something you can tap to tick off, and the list in your notes shows how far along it is: 3 of 5 done, next: buy stamps. It is all plain text underneath, so nothing you write is trapped inside the app.
Search years of notes by the sky
The moment you save a note, Umbriel records the sky of that minute: the phase of the Moon, the sign each planet was in, and which planets were retrograde. You do not have to do anything, and it never tells you what it meant. It only remembers where things were.
That is what makes the search different. You can look for a word or a phrase, or a #tag, the way you would anywhere. And you can look under a sky: every note you wrote while Mercury was retrograde, or with the Moon in Scorpio, or under a Full Moon. Over months it turns a notepad into a record you can question.
Notes about people
A note can be about somebody in your chart library. Attach it, and every note you have written about that person can be found together, next to the chart you are reading.
That is handy if you read charts for other people, and just as handy if you only keep a few names you think about. The notes are yours, and they are separate from the charts.
Bring your notes with you, and take them out again
If you already keep thousands of notes somewhere else, you can bring them in from a file: a JSON export, a ZIP of text files, or plain text, markdown or web pages. Each one keeps the date it was originally written, so its sky is the sky of that day, and bringing the same file in twice adds nothing the second time.
You can also download everything at any time as one file, with the dates and the sky of every note. Nothing about the notepad is meant to hold your writing hostage.
Private, and on every device
Without an account, your notes stay on the device you wrote them on. Sign in and they follow you between your phone and your laptop. Before a note is saved to your account it is locked in your browser with your account's key, so what sits in your account is locked text, and the search happens on your own device.
If you would like a little more, there is an optional PIN lock: four digits asked for when the notepad opens on that device, and again after you have been away for as long as you choose. It is a screen lock for someone glancing at your phone, not encryption, and it is off unless you switch it on.
Share one note with someone
Sometimes one note is worth writing together: a plan, a list, a chart you are working through with a friend. You can invite another Umbriel member to a single note by their @handle, as somebody who can read it or somebody who can write in it.
They see who invited them, and nothing of the note, until they say yes. Each shared note has its own key, sealed separately for each person on it. If two of you type in different places at once, both changes land, and if you rewrite the same words the notepad keeps both versions instead of choosing. Anyone can leave, the person who started the note can remove people or stop sharing, and a person who leaves keeps their copy. If someone keeps inviting you and you would rather they did not, you can block them and they are not told.
Where it lives
Umbriel is laid out like a chart, in twelve houses. The notepad is in the third house, the house of mind and messages, of letters, lists and the everyday writing-down of a thought. You will find its door at the foot of the charts page, and a small writing desk with a yellow pad in the third house's post office.
Questions
What is the Umbriel notepad?
A private notepad inside Umbriel. You write notes, and each one keeps the phase of the Moon and the position of every planet at the minute you wrote it, so you can search your own notes by word, person, planet, sign or moon phase.
Does every note keep the sky it was written under?
Yes. When you save a note, Umbriel records the Moon's phase, the sign of each planet, and which planets were retrograde at that minute. Notes you bring in from a file get the sky of the date they were originally written.
Do I need an account to use it?
No. Without an account your notes stay on the device you wrote them on. An account lets them follow you between devices, and is needed to share a note or use the PIN lock.
Can I bring my notes from another app?
Yes. You can bring in a JSON export, a ZIP of text files, or plain text, markdown or web page files, and each note keeps the date it was first written. Bringing in the same file twice adds nothing.
Can other people read my notes?
Only a note you choose to share, and only the people you invite to it. Everything else in your notepad is yours.
Can I get my notes out?
Yes. You can download every note, with its dates and its sky, as one file whenever you like.
Go deeper
The rest of Umbriel, free.
Umbriel offers every system here as a set of prompts to think with, never as a statement of fact about who you are.