1. What a YellowNote is

In the simplest terms, a YellowNote is an electronic version of a paper sticky note: a short message stuck exactly where it is needed, for yourself or for someone else, that stays in place for later.

Technically a note ties together two pieces of data: the web page it is attached to and the content it holds — optionally with a third, the exact part of the page that was selected. That makes YellowNotes a way to annotate the internet.

2. Notes live next to the web, not in it

A note is not part of the web page it is attached to. The owner of the page does not control it, and the note does not change the page; it is shown on top of the page in your browser, and only to the people who are allowed to see it.

This also means notes survive changes to the page. If a page goes offline, the notes attached to it can still be shown when someone visits its address.

3. Why notes are grouped in topics

On their own, notes are personal reminders. Grouped in a topic, they become a curated body of knowledge about a subject: the sources someone found worth reading, with their explanation of why each one matters.

A topic is the unit that is shared, subscribed to and used for AI chat. Its owner decides who may subscribe, whether outsiders may look, and whether the topic may be used by AI — see topic settings.

4. AI grounded in human judgement

The internet has plenty of information. What is harder to find is someone who knows what matters, which sources deserve attention, and how to interpret them. When you chat with a topic, the AI's answers are based on the notes in that topic — material a person deliberately selected and annotated — rather than only on a general model.

Updating the notes in a topic changes the material available to the AI; it does not retrain the underlying language model. AI answers can still be incomplete or mistaken, so check important claims against the original sources.

Examples of what this enables: private use cases and commercial use cases.

5. Who sees what

• A note you have not put in a topic is yours alone.
• Notes in a topic are seen by the topic's subscribers. Depending on the topic's settings, subscribers join automatically or after the owner approves them.
• A topic with anonymous access can be viewed by people who are not subscribers.
• The topic owner can suspend or block subscribers at any time.

6. Your data stays yours

YellowNotes stores the minimum needed: profile information from your login provider and the notes and topics you create. Passwords are not stored — login is handled by the provider you choose. You can export all your data, delete it, or delete your account at any time.

Read more: Privacy Policy, Data Portability, and the architecture overview.