SANCTUM
Your second brain for Mac.
Write in a calm, beautiful space. Your words live as plain files in a folder you choose — no accounts, no servers, no lock-in.
Local-first · Plain Markdown · Yours
Write in a calm, beautiful space. Your words live as plain files in a folder you choose — no accounts, no servers, no lock-in.
Chapters, essays, journals — drafted in a focused editor over living scenes. A word-goal ember keeps the streak burning, and focus mode clears everything but the page.
Collect sources, notes, and links in the Vault, sketch the connections on a research canvas, and watch the threads join into one map of what you know.
Course notes, study canvases, and a calendar of your writing days — a whole semester organized in one quiet place, in files you'll still own after graduation.
Wiki-links and #tags grow into a knowledge constellation you can actually see. Every page an ember, every idea connected — your thinking, mapped.
Link pages with [[wiki links]] and #tags, then wander the Observatory — every Space a glowing orb, every page an ember around it. Your thinking, visible.
Focus mode fades everything but your words. Living scenes — a lantern-lit grove, a mountain lake — sit quietly behind glass panels you tune to taste. Optional rain, ambient music, and typewriter keys set the room tone.
Storyboards, mind maps, timelines, research canvases — boards live beside your pages, with templates to start from and connectors that follow your thought.
The ember keeps your writing streak — bright when today's goal is met, breathing when the habit holds. No badges, no confetti. Just a fire that's lit when you are.
Sanctum stores your vault in a folder you pick and never hosts your notes. There are no accounts and no Sanctum cloud — just your files, on your Mac.
Every page is Markdown you can open with anything. Import from Obsidian or Notion; export anytime. No lock-in, ever.
No sign-up, no telemetry, no analytics. Sanctum never sees your writing — there's nothing of ours for it to sync to.
Place your vault folder in iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or Google Drive and your provider syncs it between your Macs.
Ember, the optional AI layer, is off by default. Today it’s bring-your-own API key — prompts go directly to your provider, never through us. More AI options coming soon.