The problem with filing notes
Every note you write has to go somewhere, and choosing where is a surprisingly expensive decision. Folders force one location per note. Tags let you pick several and then require you to remember which you used. Both systems get reorganised every few months by people who never quite settle, because the real problem is not the system — it is that a note about the interview process for the role you want genuinely belongs to your job search, your confidence, and your calendar at the same time.
So notes drift. They end up in a general pile, findable only by search, which works when you remember a phrase and fails when you only remember that something relevant exists.
Attach notes to structure instead
Minty Path's answer: a note lives on the branch it is about.
You already built the structure when you mapped the subject. The branch encodes what the note relates to, what it sits under, and what it connects to. So the filing decision is already made — there is no second hierarchy to design and no tags to remember, because the map is the organisation.
The practical difference shows up when you return. Instead of searching for a note, you open the branch you are working on and its context is there: what you read, what you decided, why you rejected the other option.
Two kinds, both attached
Quick notes live directly on a branch. A line of context, a decision, a link, a reminder to yourself. No title, no ceremony.
Titled notes sit alongside the branch for longer material — the raw capture from a lecture, meeting minutes, a draft, a comparison you worked through.
Both stay reachable from the branch. Both appear in All Notes, the cross-map view that reads across every Growth Path when you want the flat list, and every entry there links back to the branch that gives it meaning.
Where this is better than a notes app, and where it is not
Better: anything whose value depends on context. Research, decisions, project thinking, learning. The reason is simple — you retrieve it by opening the thing you are working on rather than by remembering what you called it.
Not better: fast capture on a phone while walking, long prose you will edit heavily, reference material you only ever search, anything you send to other people. A map is legible to its author and roughly half as legible to anyone else.
Minty Path does not try to replace a notes app, and a tool claiming to would be overreaching. It replaces the organisation of the notes that belong to your projects and goals.
For loose capture there is the Inbox — a deliberately unstructured place for things that arrive before you know where they belong. Items sit there until you connect them to a Growth Path and branch, or archive them. Registered accounts can also get a private email address so things sent from elsewhere land in the Inbox directly.
What a branch can hold besides notes
The reason attaching notes to structure works is that the branch is already where everything else about that thing lives:
- Todos — concrete next actions
- Reminders — one-time or recurring, standalone or tied to the branch
- Aim dates and Deadlines — a soft target and a fixed commitment, kept deliberately distinct
- Proof — evidence that something actually happened, required before a branch can be marked Proven
- Private Details — an optional area encrypted in your browser with your own passphrase, for the occasional sensitive thing
So the note is not filed next to the work. It is filed in it.
A workflow that holds up
- Capture linear and fast while information is arriving — a lecture, a meeting, a call. Do not try to structure it live.
- Map afterwards, ideally the same day, when you can think about shape rather than keeping up.
- Attach the raw capture to the branch it belongs to, so detail and structure stay together instead of drifting into different apps.
- Add a Todo where you actually know a next action. Not every note produces one, and inventing them is how a note system becomes a guilt system.
Try it on something real
The fastest way to judge this is to take notes you already have on something ongoing and hang them off a structure.
Open the workspace without an account — the real canvas, saved in your browser. Quick notes, todos, and proof text all work without signing up; file attachments, cross-device reminders, and email capture need an account.