Acres
Local-first, agent-native canvas notes
About Acres
Acres is a local-first, agent-native note-taking app built on an infinite canvas of plain Markdown cards that live in a folder you choose. Its central idea is ownership: cards are ordinary Markdown files and boards are readable JSON, sitting on your disk rather than inside a proprietary store, so you can open them in any editor, grep them, back them up or hand them to a script. Nothing has to be exported because nothing was ever locked in, and if you stop paying your notes stay readable and yours. On top of that foundation Acres offers the spatial-thinking tools people reach other apps for - cards, connectors, mindmaps, colorable sections, images and freehand ink on an endless board - so you can cluster what belongs together, link what relates and watch the shape of a problem emerge.
What sets Acres apart is that it treats AI agents as collaborators that build on the board, not chatbots that merely talk about your notes. Because cards are Markdown and boards are JSON, tools like Claude Code, Cursor or Codex connect over MCP in one click and can search your graph, write cards, wire connections and frame whole sections that land live on the board you are looking at, merged with your edits through a three-way merge. A built-in AI dock lets you bring your own key - Claude, GPT, Gemini, or fully local via Ollama or LM Studio - and every rewrite arrives as a word-level diff you approve, with agent activity logged so you stay editor-in-chief.
You download Acres for macOS or Windows and point it at a folder - or import an existing Obsidian vault or Heptabase backup, where folders become boards, notes become cards, daily notes join the journal and wikilinks stay intact. From there you work on an infinite canvas: drop a Markdown file in and it becomes a live card, type [[ to link cards, and gather related ideas into named, tinted sections you can move as a unit. Every checkbox in every card is already a task, and the Tasks view collects them into a kanban with your boards as swimlanes. When you want help, open an agent over MCP or the built-in AI dock and ask it to organize a wall-of-text note or build out a section; it drafts a plan - new cards pulled from the text, linked back to their source, grouped and connected - which you review, down to an ASCII sketch, before anything lands. A "while you were away" digest and word-level diffs let you inspect and revert what agents changed.
- •Infinite Markdown Canvas - Cards, connectors, mindmaps, colorable sections, images and freehand ink on an endless board, with boards you can nest inside other boards and breadcrumbs to keep the trail.
- •Your Files, Not Rows - Cards are plain Markdown and boards are readable JSON in a folder you own, so your notes are greppable, scriptable, backup-friendly and never locked into a proprietary format.
- •Agent-Native Over MCP - Claude Code, Cursor or Codex connect in one click to search your graph and write cards, connections and sections directly onto your open board, merged beside your edits.
- •Built-In AI With Your Own Key - An AI dock runs on Claude, GPT, Gemini or fully local Ollama and LM Studio models, making real edits that arrive as word-level diffs you approve.
- •Tasks From Your Notes - Every checkbox becomes a task in a kanban view with boards as swimlanes, @due(date) typed inline, and cards that move with their note across lanes.
- •Import And Reading Desk - Bring an Obsidian vault or Heptabase backup intact, open PDFs with five-color highlighting, and turn any passage into a card linked back to its source.
Acres fits thinkers who want a spatial, file-owned place to work and who increasingly collaborate with AI agents. It suits researchers, writers and knowledge workers mapping complex problems on an infinite canvas; Obsidian and Heptabase users who want local-first ownership plus agent editing and are willing to migrate their vault; and developers already living in Claude Code, Cursor or Codex who want those agents to build structured notes over MCP rather than paste text back and forth. The local-first, bring-your-own-key design also appeals to privacy-conscious users who would rather run a local model than send notes to a cloud service. It is a weaker fit for teams that need real-time multiplayer co-editing or a purely mobile-first workflow, since Acres is a desktop, single-owner app centered on files you keep and changes you personally approve.
Pricing
- Acres Plus$9/mo
- Lifetime Local Use (one-time $59)Not listed
From the vendor pricing page, 2026-10-08
