Reflect
Daily-notes + backlinks note app now relaunched as Reflect Open: open-source, offline-first, notes stored as local Markdown files synced via iCloud or Git; optional AI with your own API key. Reflect Classic still maintained.
Active · Verified 2026-10-22 · fresh as of 2026-10-22 · 38 cited facts, 4 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Type
- Apple-ecosystem second brain vendor fix
- Tier
- T2
- Created
- 2021 (earliest public activity; exact founding date unclear; profitable indie product) vendor fix
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- Pricing
- Reflect Open: Mac app free; iPhone/iPad paid subscription (App Store); AI via own API key vendor fix
- Funding
- SAFE at $15M post-money cap (community/crowdfunded via Wefunder); bootstrapped growth third-party fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-22 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- open-source repo fix
- Developer activity
- OpenRank 6.26 (12-mo avg 4.88) · 19 participants — 2026-09 third-party fix
Memory taxonomy
- storage
- graph
- retrieval
- graph-traversal
- persistence
- long-term
- update
- overwrite
- unit
- document
- governance
- user-controllable
- conflict
- overwrite
When to use
Optimised for: personal-knowledge-management UX + AI-augmented note-taking
Anti-fit: not for enterprise / programmatic use; not for compliance-regulated workloads
Pros & cons
Pros
Daily-notes + linked-thinking PKM with native AI integration; calm minimalist UX.
Cons
Smaller user base than Obsidian / Notion; AI features cover the basics, not advanced memory ops.
Claims & capabilities
Founded by Alex MacCaw (ex-ClearBit founder, sold to HubSpot); supports both GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet for AI features (note refining, summaries, creative suggestions); calendar-based + linked-thinking PKM; broader 2025 trend: AI-app revenue tripled to >$5B and AI-app downloads doubled YoY to 3.8B
Technical surface
- API surface
- not applicable — consumer PKM
- Backend storage
- custom
- Deployment
- Local-first (Markdown files on device; Mac/iPhone/iPad); Classic remains managed
- Embedding model
- locked
- Multi-tenancy
- hard-isolation
- MCP
- searched not found
- A2A
- searched not found
- OpenTelemetry
- searched not found
Alternatives to Reflect → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other personal ai / pkm / lifelogging memory in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Screenpipe T3
Local-first 24/7 screen and audio recorder that indexes what you see/hear and exposes it as context/memory to AI agents (MCP, API); open-source Rewind/Recall alternative. Y Combinator S26
- Amplenote T2
Tags + bidirectional links + task/calendar integration. "Task Score" priority matrix. AmpleAI plugin supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Ollama.
- Apple Notes + Apple Intelligence T1
Folder + tag hierarchy; iCloud sync. Writing Tools (proofread / rewrite / summarise) across all note content; audio transcription + AI summary; smart search; reminders from to-dos.
- Capacities T2
Object-graph (people, books, projects as typed objects); daily notes; bidirectional links. AI chat grounded in current note; AI property auto-fill; in-editor writing assistant; pattern-finding across objects.
- CORE (RedPlanet) T3
Always-on 'personal AI OS' that indexes email, meetings, GitHub, Linear, Slack and assistant chats into a temporal knowledge graph with fact classification and intent-driven retrieval, plus MCP integrations. reports 88.24% on LoCoMo (vendor claim)
- Craft AI T1
Hierarchical block-based documents + nested pages (no native graph). In-document AI assistant: summarise, rewrite, translate, Q&A over docs, proofread.
Sources (37 cited facts, 4 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Apple-ecosystem second brain vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Daily-notes + backlinks note app now relaunched as Reflect Open: open-source, offline-fi… vendor
- Claims / benefits Founded by Alex MacCaw (ex-ClearBit founder, sold to HubSpot); supports both GPT-4o and … vendor
- Modalities text vendor
- Created 2021 (earliest public activity; exact founding date unclear; profitable indie product) vendor
- License MIT repo
- GitHub team-reflect/reflect-open — ~1.5k stars, last commit unknown (1,107 commits) repo
- Funding SAFE at $15M post-money cap (community/crowdfunded via Wefunder); bootstrapped growth third-party
- Pricing Reflect Open: Mac app free; iPhone/iPad paid subscription (App Store); AI via own API key vendor
- Compliance no formal certifications; end-to-end encrypted (XChaCha20-Poly1305) vendor
- Data handling End-to-end encrypted; password never leaves device; AI features send selected text to Op… vendor
- Deployment Local-first (Markdown files on device; Mac/iPhone/iPad); Classic remains managed vendor
- HQ US third-party
- Founders / pedigree Alex MacCaw (founder; ex-Clearbit CEO; ex-Stripe); co-built with Ocavue and Vojtech Rinik third-party
- Memory volume / scale no scale claim vendor
- Backend storage custom vendor
- Multi-tenancy hard-isolation vendor
- Encryption at-rest + in-transit (E2E) vendor
- Embedding model locked vendor
- Tombstoning hard-delete supported vendor
- Schema evolution schema with migration vendor
- Namespace primitives per-tenant vendor
- Contradiction handling always overwrite (last-write-wins) vendor
- Forgetting policy user-controlled forget vendor
- Validated verticals consumer / individual (knowledge workers, students, researchers) vendor
- Time to running <10min (hosted SaaS sign-up or app download) vendor
- Anti-fit not for enterprise / programmatic use; not for compliance-regulated workloads vendor
- Optimised for personal-knowledge-management UX + AI-augmented note-taking vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure self-contained app; some require iCloud / Google Drive vendor
- Pros Daily-notes + linked-thinking PKM with native AI integration; calm minimalist UX. vendor
- Cons Smaller user base than Obsidian / Notion; AI features cover the basics, not advanced mem… vendor
- Project & sources reflect.app vendor
- architecture-deployment-locus local vendor
- licensing-bucket open-source repo
- positioning-platform-vs-product product vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
- developer-activity-opendigger {"activity":109.08,"as_of":"2026-09","openrank_12mo":4.88,"openrank_current":6.26,"parti… third-party
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-22
- License “not applicable — not OSS” → “MIT” source
- Pricing “$10/mo or $120/yr (no free plan; 14-day trial)” → “Reflect Open: Mac app free; iPhone/iPad paid subscription (App Store); AI via own API key” source
- Deployment “Managed-only” → “Local-first (Markdown files on device; Mac/iPhone/iPad); Classic remains managed” source