olai

The file format

Each outline is a .jsonl file: one JSON object per line, one node per line. Nodes have stable ids and parent pointers, so line-based git merges are safe and moving a subtree changes one field. See the format spec.

{"id":"kitchen","ord":"a","title":"Kitchen renovation"}
{"id":"demo","parent":"kitchen","ord":"a0",
 "title":"Demolition","done":"2026-08-09T14:02:11-04:00"}
{"id":"order","parent":"kitchen","ord":"a1",
 "title":"Order the new cabinets #blocking",
 "doing":true,"after":["demo"],"doc":"cabinets.md",
 "desc":"Measure twice — the corner unit is the risky one."}

$ git diff
-{"id":"order","parent":"kitchen","ord":"a1", … }
+{"id":"order","parent":"now","ord":"a1", … }

Compared to Workflowy and Dynalist

olai keeps the outlining model those tools established — indent, move, mirror, check off. The difference is where the data lives and what can reach it.

Markdown documents

Notes are Markdown. Longer content goes in .md files, referenced from the outline by the doc field. Each document gets its own page and appears in the sidebar's file tree.

# Cabinet specs

The corner unit is the **risky one** — see
[the measurements](measurements.md).

- 600 mm base × 4
- corner carousel × 1

Daily notes

A Markdown file named for a date — 2026-08-12.md, anywhere in the directory — is that day’s note. No setting says so, and it can live wherever your vault already puts it. Open the day and the note is on top, with everything dated that day underneath it. Relative links between your Markdown files keep working from there.

Daily/
  2026/
    08/
      2026-08-12.md   ← the 12th
      2026-08-10-recap.md  ← not a daily note

Task status

A node can carry one of three marks: done, doing, or todo. A node with no mark is not a task and gets no checkbox.

Keyboard editing

Click a title to edit it in place. Each edit is one operation through the same layer the agent uses, and each lands as a git commit.

Undo is an inverse rather than a restore: it replays the edit that reverses yours, judged against the outline as it is now — so it never takes back what an agent or another tab did in the meantime, and one that no longer fits says why.

Not everything has a key. Hover a row and the ••• in the gutter carries the rest: the three marks and clearing one, clearing a date, retiring one placement of a mirrored node, archiving a subtree — it asks first, and says how many rows go with it — and copying the subtree as tab-indented plain text. Those go on the same undo stack, so ⌘Z takes a menu edit back too. There is no delete: archiving moves the subtree to an Archive.jsonl keeping its ids, so nothing that pointed at it breaks. Every one of those is the same operation an agent would perform, which is a rule olai holds itself to: both faces can do the same things to a directory.

Agents, over ACP

The chat panel connects to any agent that speaks ACP. Claude Code is bundled as the default; set OLAI_ACP_AGENT to use a different agent CLI. Agents get a fixed set of node tools and no file access, so every write is validated before it lands.

Files go in by paste, by drag, or by the picker: drag a screenshot, a PDF or a text file onto the conversation — several at once if you like — and the panel lights up the area that will take it while you are still holding it. The agent is handed the path to read, not the bytes. They live in a temporary directory of that conversation's own, never under the directory being served, and go away with it. A picture shows itself; a document shows its name and size. Anything olai will not take is refused where you dropped it, by name.

Git integration

Writes go to disk immediately and are committed when you choose — everything the repository has waiting, outlines and the files beside them, ticked one by one if you want a smaller commit, and pushed from the same panel. Commit messages are prefixed with olai:, so git log --grep '^olai' shows the audit trail.

┌─ Changes ─────────────────────────────────┐
│ olai: Outlines as a collection done       │
│   · chat agent · 12m ago · 1a2b3c4        │
│                                           │
│ OUTLINES ─────────────────────────────    │
│ ☑ roadmap.jsonl                           │
│   ✓  Outlines as a collection    done     │
│   ✎  Notes: one state, same line  note    │
│   +  Kolu integration: auto-…    created  │
│                                           │
│ OTHER FILES ──────────────────────────    │
│ ☑ README.md                    modified   │
│ ☐ notes/scratch.md            untracked   │
│                                           │
│ 2 commits not on origin/master   [ Push ] │
│         [ Commit 3 changes · 1 file ]     │
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘

$ claude mcp add olai -- olai mcp ~/outlines