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What LOOP is

You have one job: type or say the thing. LOOP files it. No folder to pick, no tag to choose, no form to fill.

Nothing is lost

A capture is stored the moment it lands. Offline, it waits on your phone and files itself when the signal is back.

Nothing is invented

No date you didn't say. No person you didn't name. A blank beats a guess, always.

No counts

No badges, no "12 overdue". A number you cannot act on is a number that makes you avoid the app.

One red

Red means one thing only: a promise you made to someone else, past its date. Everything else is quiet.

Five surfaces, along the bottom of the screen. CAPTURE is the front door and the only one you have to use. TODAY is at most five things. LEDGER is every open promise with a person's name on it. OPEN is everything still to do, by status or on a month. EVERYTHING is every capture you have ever made, newest first, in the words you wrote.

Everything else — the projects, the people, the lists, the dates — is worked out from what you typed. You never file anything.

THE FRONT DOOR

Capture

Type or photograph. The stamp is the whole feedback loop: FILED means stored, safe, sorted later.

Return files. Shift and Return makes a new line. The field clears the instant you file, because the next thought should cost nothing.

A photo shows preparing… the moment you choose it, and from the tap on FILE IT it is a slip marked SENDING with its picture; the field is free for the next thought. Offline, the same slip reads HELD and files itself when you are back on signal.

If the server refuses a capture — too long, say — the words go straight back into the field with the reason. Nothing typed is ever lost.

When a capture names no person and no day, the receipt asks one question: **Back when?** Tonight, tomorrow morning, or Saturday. Tapping one sets a reminder; ignoring it is the default and costs nothing. It is only ever asked about a capture with no other way back — one that named a person is on the Ledger, and one that named a day is on Today.

WHAT TO TYPE

The grammar

Plain words always work. A few marks let you file without thinking, and those are read instantly on your phone, before anything reaches a server.

#loft measure the joists

A project exists the first time you name it.

@dave i'll send the COI by friday

A promise to Dave, due Friday. On the Ledger, and on Today when it is due.

@anna owes me the deposit

A promise from Anna.

@sam the deck tuesday

A person but no direction: the receipt asks which way rather than guessing.

+groceries oat milk, eggs, bin bags

A list exists the first time you name it; a comma is a new line. "+groceries" alone shows it.

remind me thu 4p to call john

A to-do with a reminder, which arrives within the hour of four on Thursday.

https://example.com/rig-spec worth a read

Under Links, shown as the page's own picture and title with your words under it, never the address.

passport is in the grey drawer

A thing and where it is. Under Photos & things.

Anna needs the quote by thursday

No marks: the model reads it a moment after the stamp, and the receipt rewrites itself.

the client wants the proposal soon

No name, no day: no person and no date. The rules forbid inventing either.

Inside the top of the capture box is one row of keys: **# PROJECT**, **@ PERSON**, **+ LIST** and **WHEN**. Tap one and it types the mark into the field and leaves the caret on it. The row changes what it offers: start typing a mark and the keys become the names that would finish it, in the same row, so the field never moves under your thumb. A key lights up once the words carry that mark. Nothing in the row is a setting — every key types characters and holds nothing of its own, because the capture is the words.

A mark lights up in the field the moment it is a mark: `#loft` warms amber, `@dave` teal, `+packing` blue. That is worth more than it looks. The commonest way a tag fails is a stray character or a space after the sigil, and an unlit word says so a keystroke later instead of a week later when you cannot find the capture.

Under the field, the same parse in words — the project, the person, the day, the list — before you file. Nothing is invented there. `the client wants the proposal soon` shows no person and no day, because it named neither.

Typing a `#`, `@` or `+` offers the names that already exist. Tap one, or press Tab to take the best match, or arrow onto one and press Return. If what you have typed matches nothing, it says `new project` rather than quietly making a second one a character away from the first.

Return files, always — unless you have arrowed into the list of names on purpose, which is the one case where it takes the name instead. Tapping a name finishes the word in the field, because the words are still the record.

WHAT IS ON TODAY

Today

At most five things, chosen by slot, never by a sort that would show the same five forever: up to three late, one due today, one you just promised. Fewer is a correct answer.

Every row has the same three verbs and the same undo. LATER is tomorrow at 07:00 in your own timezone unless you pick a day.

Five is the cap, and the slots are floors rather than ceilings: at most three overdue, then at least one due today, then at least one you just took on. Whatever nobody claims goes to the things you set for today, so four things marked for today all appear rather than one. The debt stays capped at three however much room there is — a Today that is mostly failure is a Today you stop opening.

WHO IS WAITING ON WHOM

The Ledger

Every open promise with a named person. The same rows, the same three verbs, the same undo as Today.

A promise owed to you closes with GOT IT rather than DONE, because you did not do it.

At the foot of the list: Same person, two names? — when @dave and Dave S became two people, pick the name to keep and tick the others. Their promises show under one name; the old spellings keep working. Nothing is deleted.

EVERYTHING STILL TO DO

Open — by status

Three columns: OPEN · LATER · DONE. A card you snooze waits in LATER and comes back to OPEN at 07:00 on the morning you chose.

Dropped into LATER, a card asks Tomorrow · Monday · Next week · Pick a day before anything is written. On a desktop the three columns sit side by side and a card is dragged by its grip.

THE SAME THINGS, ON A MONTH

Open — by date

Dots, never numbers. The calendar plans nothing and is not a place to put things; it shows what already has a date.

EVERY CAPTURE, FOREVER

Everything

Newest first, in the words you wrote. This is where Stuff and Projects live now, as chips.

The chips narrow the wall: Lists, Photos & things, Links, Promises, To do, Notes, then a chip per project, a chip per person, and Dropped at the end.

Search takes words, a day, or both — "dave tuesday", "last week", "boiler", "21 jun". What you searched for is in the address, so back brings the same board back.

WHAT THE COLOURS MEAN

The two bars

A promise has another person in it, and that is the one thing on a wall of two hundred cards worth finding without reading. So exactly two kinds carry a colour.

An amber bar

A promise you owe someone. The card also says OWED.

A teal bar

A promise someone owes you. The card also says WAITING.

No bar

Everything else: notes, to dos, links, things. Most of the wall.

Red

Only ever a promise to another person that is past its date. Nothing else in the app is allowed to be red.

The word is there beside the colour on purpose, so the card reads the same to anyone who cannot tell the two hues apart.

SEE IT, SAVE IT, OPEN IT

Photos and links

Every photo is read, captioned or not — a receipt's shop and total sit under it and are searchable — and the photo as taken is kept.

Tap a picture to see it full size, on a dark ground, with DOWNLOAD. It saves as the words you typed and the day: a receipt filed as "tesco receipt" lands on a computer as tesco receipt 2026-09-14.jpg. Where the phone's untouched original was kept, that is what DOWNLOAD hands over.

A link is drawn as the page's own picture and title with your words above it, never the bare address. A tap opens the page.

EVERY ROW, CARD AND RECEIPT OPENS THIS

The card

On a phone it rises from the bottom and Back closes it. Every change here is a new event on top of the card; nothing is overwritten.

DONE, LATER and DROP are the same three verbs the rows have. Under them: PIN to keep something in front of you, EDIT for the title, COPY for the words. Then Kind, Who and Project as three selects, the due date, a reminder, and comments.

An open card has an address, so a link to it opens it directly.

A capture that triage has not made a card of yet still opens. Its sheet shows the picture or the words and says nothing has been made of it; the next sweep reads it and files it.

OUT OF THE WAY, AND GONE

Dropping and deleting

Two different things, and the difference matters.

DROP

Takes the card off Today, the Ledger, Open and the wall. It is not gone: the Dropped chip at the end of the row on Everything is where it went.

RESCUE

On a dropped card's sheet, where DONE would be. Puts it back in OPEN and back on the wall.

DELETE

The last word at the foot of a card's sheet. It asks first, then removes the capture and everything it became — the card, its history, its reading, the list lines it added, the picture or recording. There is no undo.

Reply N

Within five minutes of a stamp on Telegram or a text, takes the whole capture back. The card stays on the wall, dimmed, marked "taken back".

A LIST IS A CARD

Lists

Type +groceries milk, eggs, bin bags and a list exists with three lines on it. A comma is a new line.

Tick a line to cross it out; Clear ticked takes the crossed ones away. Add to this list… at the foot adds without leaving the board. While there are only a couple of lists they flow with the cards; past that they sit behind the Lists chip.

Tap the list's name to open it, the way you open a card. Inside: RENAME for the list, a tap on any line to rewrite its words, and a Project select so the whole list can be filed under something. Every one of those is a new event on top of the list — the line keeps its id, its tick and its place, and the capture that first made it is untouched. If a change cannot be saved it says so on the card rather than quietly reverting.

A CHIP IS THE PROJECT

A project

Choose a project chip and the board is that project — with the brief and the repair for two names.

CATCH ME UP writes a brief from your own captures only. Every line cites the capture it came from; tap a line to see it. A project with one capture gets an honest "not enough filed", never a paragraph.

A tag can be edited, and made before it has ever been typed. **+ TAG** on Everything makes one; **Edit tag** on the one you are looking at changes it. Renaming keeps the old spelling working, so captures written last month still land here.

**Also reached by** is the useful part: words that file under the tag with no **#** at all. Give Marshalls the word *escalation* and `work on the escalation plan` files there. It is deliberately shy — whole words only, never the tag's own name, and never when two tags both claim the words. A tag's name is not a trigger, because a filing system that files what you did not ask it to is worse than one that files nothing.

A colour is a blip on the tag itself, and never on a card. The wall keeps its colour for promises, which only works while colour is rare there.

A tag can sit beneath another — **Under**, in the tag sheet, offers every other tag except itself and its own sub-tags. A capture filed under a sub-tag shows on that sub-tag's own board, and rolls up onto its main tag's board too, so opening Kitchen still finds what was filed under Backsplash. On the chip row a sub-tag sits right after its main tag, marked ›, rather than wherever its own activity would otherwise place it.

THE CHANNEL THAT COSTS NOTHING

Telegram

Text the bot anything and the same stamp comes back — a photo with a caption, a photo alone, a voice note, a shared link.

Reply N within five minutes to undo. Text ? loft for a brief of everything under Loft. The morning digest and the Sunday review arrive here.

FROM ANY PHONE

Texts

Text the LOOP number and it files, exactly as Telegram does, and texts a stamp back.

Only the number on the account can reach it; a text from anywhere else is dropped in silence. Text START to opt in, STOP to stop — your captures still file, you just stop getting receipts — and START again to resume.

A picture texted in is copied into LOOP's own storage, read like any other photo, and removed from the carrier.

THE CAPTURE THAT NEEDS NO THUMB

Calls

Call the LOOP number. It says "LOOP. Go.", plays a tone, and records until you hang up or press #.

The recording is kept, transcribed, and filed like any voice note — said aloud, #kitchen call the plumber by friday gets the project, the date and the kind. A text comes back with the stamp and the words that were heard.

Driving, walking, hands full: the moment when typing is the thing you would put off. A call from any other number is rejected before it is answered.

TWICE, QUIETLY

The digest and the review

One message each morning with what is on today, one on Sunday evening with what moved and what did not, and a reminder at the moment you asked for one.

A reminder arrives within the hour of the time you set — it used to arrive the following morning. It always names the time it was set for, so a late one says so rather than pretending.

Neither the digest nor the review carries a count, and neither asks you to do anything.

THE SAME APP, WIDER

On a desktop

Nothing is different; there is just more room.

Open lays its three columns side by side and a card is dragged by its grip — dropped into LATER, it asks which morning before anything is written. Everything keeps its chips in one row and its cards in a wall.