Grug Notes
Grug Notes is a self-organizing notes app that files, links and tags everything you write, type or say — no folders required. A single subscription bundles chat models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and open-weight labs, plus voice transcription.
What is Grug Notes?
Grug Notes is a note-taking service that files itself. You write, paste, speak or email something in, and the system decides where it belongs: there are no folders to create, no categories to pick and no tagging chores. Its maker calls it an AI multi-tool rather than a vertical app, on the reasoning that the job is simply to organise text and apply AI wherever it genuinely helps. The house comparison is blunt — what you would get if ChatGPT and Apple Notes had a child, with Notion deliberately left out of the room.
Two mechanisms carry most of the work. The first is automatic structure: mention a person, a company or a date and Grug Notes builds a page for it, gathering phone numbers, emails, addresses and every note where that name appears. It is a private wiki that writes its own links. The second is a chat that reads your notes as context and runs on your choice of ten models, among them the house GLM 5.2 brain, GPT 5.6, Gemini 3.7 Flash and Claude Opus 5. Every model is included on every plan; the stronger ones simply draw more of your monthly credit allowance. Apply drops an answer straight into a note, Smart Compare shows what the AI changed so you can accept or reject each edit, and 2nd Opinion puts the same question to a different model. A planning agent called Big Brain handles longer work, such as a six-month marathon schedule or a thirty-day meal prep with shopping lists.
Voice runs through the whole product. Record a solo ramble, capture a multi-speaker meeting for diarised transcription, or use Live mode on iPhone to find a note, edit it, get an answer or run a calculation without touching a keyboard. Notes also arrive by email to a private address, through a Telegram bot, from Google Calendar, or from Apple Health workouts. Developers get a Python CLI, a REST API with scoped keys, and two-way Markdown sync.
The publisher is unusual: Kamanu Composites, an outrigger canoe maker in Hawai'i writing its own software since 2008, with no venture funding behind it.
What it does
- Files, links and tags every note automatically — no folders, no categories, no decisions
- Turns speech into notes: solo memos, multi-speaker meetings, and hands-free editing by voice
- Answers questions about your own notes in chat, on your pick of ten AI models
- Builds a page for every person, company and date you mention, with backlinks to each note
- Drafts long structured plans through the Big Brain agent: training schedules, meal prep, quarterly goals
- Takes input from email and Telegram, and syncs both ways with Google Calendar
- Feeds scripts and AI agents through a Python CLI and a REST API with scoped keys
When to use Grug Notes / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Grug Notes is the right fit.
When to use Grug Notes
- People who take notes away from a desk — on a shop floor, a job site or a boat — and would rather talk than type
- Solo users and small businesses who want one affordable subscription instead of separate ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude plans
- Anyone who abandons note apps because the filing and tagging becomes a chore, since Grug Notes does the organising itself
- Developers and AI agent builders, who get a Python CLI, a REST API, scoped keys and two-way local Markdown sync
- Athletes, coaches and dietitians building long training or meal plans, with Apple Health workouts imported automatically
When not to use Grug Notes
- Anyone who needs end-to-end encryption or offline-only storage — the vendor says so outright and points to Obsidian instead
- Regulated or enterprise buyers, as no SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA certification is published and no data processing agreement is offered
- Organisations that must keep data in the European Union, since the service runs from the United States with no residency option
- Android users, because the only mobile app is for iPhone
- Teams living in back-to-back calls — the vendor positions its meeting recorder for the occasional session, not a full schedule
How to use Grug Notes
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Sign up with Google, Apple or an email address — 30 credits come free and no payment card is asked for
- Start in daily notes and dump everything there; the system works out where each piece belongs
- Capture by typing, by tapping record for a voice memo, or by talking in Live mode on iPhone
- Let the automatic pass run: notes get filed, and people, companies and dates become linked pages
- Open the chat to ask questions with your notes as context, choosing a model from the picker, which shows each one's credit cost
- Use Apply to drop an AI answer into a note, and Smart Compare to accept or reject its edits one by one
- Ask Big Brain for a full plan when a single answer is not enough
- Connect the optional channels you want: email ingestion, the Telegram bot, Google Calendar, Apple Health on iOS
- Schedule an agent to check in on your goals, send a daily brief or surface what is coming up
- Developers: pip install grugnotes-cli, take an API key from Settings, then sync notes to local Markdown and push edits back
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Ten models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and open-weight labs for $7 a month, against $20 each for the consumer subscriptions they stand in for
- The organising genuinely happens without you: no taxonomy to design, no folders to maintain
- Voice capture and hands-free editing built for people away from a keyboard rather than bolted on afterwards
- No lock-in: Markdown export at any time, and a full JSON or CSV export on request
- A clear, repeated commitment that no customer data trains any model, backed by enterprise-tier contracts with each provider
- Unusually candid documentation: every subprocessor named, retention given in days and years, and the embedding reconstruction risk acknowledged
- Writing, organising and searching notes stay free forever, since credits only meter the AI
Cons
- No end-to-end encryption and no offline mode, which the vendor states plainly rather than hiding
- No SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA certification, and no data processing agreement on offer
- United States hosting only, with no EU data residency and no Article 27 representative
- Automatic organisation sends content to AI providers even when you never invoke an AI feature
- No Android app: mobile means an iPhone or a browser shortcut
- Credit costs are explicitly not fixed and may rise, and credits carry no cash value and never roll over past the window
- A very small operation — one person answers support, legal and GDPR, and no postal address appears on the site
Pricing & Plans
A permanent free plan is available: every account opens with 30 lifetime credits, requires no payment card, and keeps note-taking, organising and searching free whatever the credit balance. The lowest paid entry point is the Grug Raw plan at USD 5.00 per month for 100 credits. The tier the vendor recommends, Grug Core, costs USD 7.00 per month billed annually at USD 84.00 per year, or USD 12.00 per month with no commitment.
- Free — 30 lifetime credits
- never renewed
- no payment card required
- Grug Raw — USD 5 per month
- 100 credits per rolling 30-day window
- Grug Core — USD 7 per month billed annually (USD 84 per year) or USD 12 month-to-month
- 1
- 000 credits
- marked as the recommended plan
- Grug Plus — USD 16 per month
- 2
- 000 credits
- Grug Pro — USD 24 per month
- 3
- 000 credits
- Grug Max — USD 59 per month
- 10
- 000 credits
- Gift — one year of Grug Core for USD 84
- bought outright with no subscription attached
- Every tier carries the same features
- all AI models and the Big Brain agent included
- the higher plans buy credit volume only
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Grug Notes handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is concrete rather than nominal. The privacy policy, last updated on 21 August 2026, gives section 14 to users in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland: it names the legal bases relied on — contract, legitimate interests, consent and legal obligation — and lists rights of access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability, objection, withdrawal of consent and complaint to a supervisory authority. A data protection officer under Article 37 is designated and reachable at keizo@grugnotes.com, and requests can also go through a hosted Termly form. The vendor commits to replying within thirty days. Transfers to the United States are said to rely on standard contractual clauses and adequacy decisions. Two gaps deserve naming: no Article 27 EU representative is appointed, and no data processing agreement is published or offered anywhere on the site.
Who owns the data?
Under the Terms of Service you keep every ownership right in the content you create, and Kamanu Composites, LLC claims no intellectual property in it — a position that covers both what you feed the AI and what it hands back. You can export your notes to Markdown from the app whenever you like, or request a full JSON or CSV export by email. The company says it generally avoids reading private content, naming only four exceptions: support requests you consent to, fixing technical errors, investigating abuse, and legal obligation. It states plainly that it does not sell personal information or share it for third-party marketing, and it reserves the right to remove content that breaks the Terms.
Reuse rights
You may reuse anything you put into Grug Notes without asking permission: the Terms grant the vendor no rights over your material, and Markdown export is available from the app at any time, which the company sums up as no lock-in. In the other direction your content does travel. Chat messages, notes, voice recordings and imported Apple Health workouts are sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Groq and Fireworks AI, with xAI and Meta used only when you pick their models. Some of that happens without you invoking anything, because semantic embeddings, automatic linking, entity tagging and date extraction are core to how the product organises itself. Passwords, payment details and other users' data are never shared. All providers are engaged on enterprise or API tiers and have committed not to train on your content, not to retain it beyond processing, and not to use it for their own purposes.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Grug Notes is operated from the United States, and all user data is transferred to, stored in and processed there; no other residency option is offered. The application runs on Google Cloud Platform using Cloud Run, Cloud Tasks and Secret Manager, with a Cloud SQL database behind a Django and MySQL stack. Amazon Web Services carries the email pipeline through SES, S3 and SNS, with inbound mail landing briefly in a bucket named grugnotes-incoming-emails. The vector embeddings that power semantic search are held by Pinecone. The privacy policy adds that cloud infrastructure operates globally and that AI providers may process data in the United States and other regions, so the picture is US-centred rather than US-exclusive. Transfers out of Europe are said to rest on standard contractual clauses and adequacy decisions. Data is encrypted in transit with TLS, encrypted at rest where sensitive, and passwords are hashed with industry-standard algorithms. No hosting or security certification such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is published.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Grug Notes.
- Automatic organisation is not optional: writing a note is enough to send its content to a third-party AI provider, so treat genuinely sensitive material accordingly
- Without end-to-end encryption the vendor can technically read your notes, however narrowly it promises not to
- Anyone holding your @add.grugnotes.com ingestion address can write notes into your account, so keep it private and regenerate it if it leaks
- Leaning on a tool designed to remember so you do not have to can quietly erode your own recall over time
- Credit pricing can change at any time, and credits are a quota with no cash value that never rolls over beyond the 30-day window
- Semantic embeddings held at Pinecone carry a reconstruction risk the vendor itself calls very low but not zero
- A one-person operation means support, legal and GDPR all rest on a single email address, with no published postal address and no uptime guarantee
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low for everyday use. Sign in with Google, Apple or an email address and start writing: there are no folders to design and nothing to configure, which is the whole premise. The iPhone app comes from the App Store, and the site can be added to a home screen as a web app. Optional integrations — Google Calendar, Telegram, Apple Health — are each a short opt-in. Only the developer path asks for real skill: installing the Python CLI, generating a scoped API key and running local Markdown sync. API keys require a paid plan.
Deployment
Apps stores
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Grug Notes
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Grug Notes.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Grug Notes?
What does Grug Notes cost?
Which AI models can I use?
Are my notes used to train AI models?
Is there a mobile app?
Can I get my data out?
Does Grug Notes have an API?
Where is my data stored?
Who is behind Grug Notes?
Is there a minimum age?
Should you pick Grug Notes?
Grug Notes is a deliberate outlier. Where most tools narrow to a single job, this one stays horizontal on purpose, and its author says so openly: he is not trying to out-feature Notion. What you get is a notebook that organises itself, listens as readily as it reads, and bundles ten frontier and open-weight models into one $7 subscription — a price that undercuts a single consumer ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude plan by roughly two thirds.
Its real strengths are the two things it does without being asked. Notes get filed, linked and tagged on their own, and voice works everywhere, which matters when your hands are usually busy. The documentation is unusually honest for a product this small: every subprocessor is named, retention is given in days and years, and the vendor even concedes that reconstructing content from its stored embeddings is unlikely rather than impossible.
The limits are just as clear, and mostly chosen. There is no end-to-end encryption and no offline mode; the vendor says as much and sends you to Obsidian if that is what you need. There is no Android app, no security certification, no data processing agreement and no European hosting. Automatic organisation means your content reaches AI providers even when you never ask for AI. And a single person carries support, legal and privacy.
None of that disqualifies the tool for the audience it names — individuals and small businesses — but it does rule out regulated procurement fairly decisively. Grug Notes suits someone who has given up on note apps because the filing turned into work, who talks more than they type, and who would rather back a small profitable shop than a funded startup. Anyone arriving with a compliance checklist should look elsewhere.
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