User Guide

1Quick start

MemoBrain is a workspace: three canvases (mind maps / flowcharts / architecture) plus two knowledge spaces (knowledge base / knowledge graph). One file splits into pages — all three canvases coexist, convert with one click, and the canvases and knowledge base are linked both ways. The one-line manual: let AI draft 80%, and you polish the last 20%.

Create a diagram

1. Click “New” in the toolbar, or press Ctrl+N to create a file
2. Add pages with “+” in the tab bar at the bottom; tabs drag to reorder
3. You start in mind maps: double-click the root to type, Tab adds a child and Enter a sibling
4. Switch the five workspaces in the left rail: mind maps / flowcharts / architecture / knowledge base / knowledge graph

Open & save

• Open: Ctrl+O or the menu “File → Open”
• Save: Ctrl+S; save as: Ctrl+Shift+S
• Import support: Word / Excel / PPT / PDF / Markdown / CSV / HTML / RTF / EPUB / OpenDocument / ENEX (Evernote) / Notion export (zip) / JSON — with the knowledge base: web fetching, the clipper, email and Readwise sync

2Mind maps

Growing the tree

• Tab (or Ctrl+Enter) creates a child under the selected node
• Enter creates a sibling next to the selected node
• Delete / Backspace removes the selected node and its subtree
• Space collapses / expands the selected subtree
• F2 renames the selected node

Organizing nodes

• Drag to re-parent: drop a node onto another to make it a child; drop on empty space to detach it
• Arrow-key navigation: jump to the nearest neighbor by screen direction — no clicking
• Copy & paste subtrees: Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V carry the whole subtree
• Format painter: select a node to pick up its style, then click targets to apply in bulk
• Labels & notes: nodes wear multi-color capsule tags, and a note card follows the cursor
• Icons & images: 28 built-in icons in six families (document / idea / status / structure / flow / mark); paste images and resize freely
• Content blocks: nodes embed code blocks (highlighted), formulas, tables and images

Relation lines

• Draw: click “Relation line” in the toolbar, then the start node, then the target; Esc cancels
• Reshape: drag endpoint handles to re-bind to other nodes or slide along borders; drag the middle handle to bend only the curve — the shape follows when nodes move
• Restyle: right-click a line to change color, switch straight/curved and solid/dashed, or delete it

Layout switching

29 layouts in one click across 8 groups: basic (right / left / both sides / butterfly), 6 tree directions, org chart, timelines (horizontal / vertical / S), fishbone, tree-table, matrix, and thinking maps (brace / cycle / bubble / fan / dual-flow / quadrant). Node sizes adapt to text width, group boxes join the layout, and switching never hand-rearranges your work.

Theme gallery

The palette button at the canvas’s lower-left or “Theme” in the toolbar: 49 color themes in six families — hover previews the whole page, click applies to the current page.

Search & replace

Ctrl+F opens search (embedded in the title bar), Enter for next, Shift+Enter for previous; Ctrl+H expands find & replace — works on canvas node labels and knowledge-base bodies alike.

Hand-drawn strokes

Turn on “Hand-drawn strokes” in canvas settings and the page goes hand-drawn: wobbly node borders and lines, with 8 stroke styles (sketch / pen / marker / pencil / crayon / scribble / chalk / brush), plus 8 “hand-drawn themes” applying strokes, canvas color and texture as a set; layer textures, pick from 6 handwriting fonts, Ctrl+Alt+H toggles instantly. Works across mind maps / flow / architecture, and exports match the canvas. Canvas backgrounds take solid colors, gradients and textures — or “no canvas” for full transparency.

3Flowcharts

Nodes & shapes

• Double-click empty canvas to create a node; right-click to switch shapes: rounded rectangle, diamond decision, ellipse, subprocess, document and 10+ more
• Select a node to style it in the sidebar: fill, border, line style, font size
• Shape rotation: the handle above a node rotates freely around its center (Shift snaps 15°); the right-click menu offers ±90° and reset

Connectors

• Drag from one node’s edge to another to connect them
• Line styles: solid / dashed / solid arrow / dashed arrow, 6 colors, labels supported
• One-click tidy: connectors auto-route orthogonally with zero crossings — messy lines straightened in bulk
• Line bridges: crossings arch automatically, so connected-or-not is obvious at a glance
• Drag a connector’s endpoint to re-bind it to another node

Editing

• Delete removes the selection (multi-select supported)
• Ctrl+A select all / Ctrl+C copy / Ctrl+X cut / Ctrl+V paste
• Arrow keys nudge: Ctrl+arrows for big steps, arrows for small ones
• Marquee: drag a box around nodes to operate on them together

Conversion

A finished flowchart converts to a mind map in one click, and AI handles map ⇄ flow ⇄ architecture conversions across modes.

4Architecture & swimlanes

Layered containers

• Drag containers in from the left rail; drop component nodes inside to group them
• 28 industry & tech templates out of the box (industries, microservices / cloud-native architectures, tech stacks, swimlanes / tech roadmaps); with mind-map / flow / business / UML-sequence templates the built-in library totals 43
• Right-click a container to bring it to front or send it to back

Combo library & chart widgets

• 75 combo pieces: list cards / hub-spoke / cycles / ladders / timelines (vertical & horizontal) and 2-to-5-piece pre-arranged sets — click or drag to insert whole. A combo is one unit: drag it as a group, then click a member to “enter” and stretch or move it alone
• 82 chart types (76 static + 6 dynamic): bars / bi-directional bars / butterfly / pie & donut & exploded & outer-label & shaded & labeled & 3D pies / exploded & outer-label & labeled & chip-label & leader-line & thin donuts / rose / funnel / cylinder share / radar / dashed & bold-outline & arrow-axis & dotted radars / scatter & bubble / outlined / square / triangle / diamond / cross / dash / ring scatters / outlined / pattern / gradient / solid areas / smooth & bubble & gradient & dot & stem lines / shaded & inner-label & 3D & 3D-cylinder & spike & coin & column-line combo columns / 3D & pattern & hollow & glass stacked columns / gauges / KPI cards / rolling lines / flip counters / progress rings / status lights / liquid balls / clocks / leaderboards and more — data charts embed right in architecture canvases and edit via table paste; charts animate on entrance and on data changes, select one to loop a demo
• Architecture themes: components auto-color by semantic category; blueprint / developer-dark themes switch in one click
• Rotation: components rotate around center too (handle / right-click 90°)

Swimlanes

• Horizontal lanes sit below, vertical lanes above; when stacked, the upper lane turns into a transparent dashed note layer
• Components always belong to the solid container beneath: drag the lower container and components follow, drag the dashed frame and they stay
• Z-order is controlled only by right-click front/back — dragging containers never changes it

Connectors

Component-to-component connectors support arrow direction, flow animation and line styles (solid/dashed/arrows) — the same engine as flowcharts, with one-click orthogonal tidying too.

5Shortcut reference

6AI assistant

AI isn’t a chat widget — it’s a collaborator with 50+ tools: canvas tools work directly on the diagram (find nodes, connect, restyle, switch layouts); the rest manage the knowledge base and graph, research, and tidy up.

Eight capabilities

• Generate: mind maps / flowcharts / architecture from one sentence; scene keywords go further — swimlanes, tech roadmaps, UML sequence, deployment topology, data-flow / ER and tech-stack diagrams
• Convert: mind map ⇄ flowchart ⇄ architecture across modes
• Expand: select a node and let AI branch further
• Explain: analyzes the current diagram and surfaces structural insights
• Edit: colors, fonts, layouts — by description, not by hand
• Read the library: knowledge-base entries as input — generate from your own material
• Graph: build the knowledge graph from the library in one click; AI reads a topic graph and sums it up as a map, flow or architecture
• Write-up: turns the canvas back into an article, exported to Word

Documents to diagrams, one shot

Upload Word / PDF / Markdown / images — long documents are deep-read into an outline, then a diagram, replacing half an hour of copy-paste with one sentence; Excel / PPT / EPUB and more enter via the knowledge base first, and AI cites the entries directly.

Reliability & input

• AI runs a “check-up” after drawing: finds and fixes layout problems like overlaps; canvas snapshots roll back anytime
• Results confirm before landing: AI shows a result card — click “Apply” to land it on canvas, or just ignore it
• Voice input supported — talk, and AI works
• The library is snapshotted before any AI tidy-up; roll back in one click if you dislike the result

Configuration

• Works with DeepSeek, AISpeech and other OpenAI-compatible endpoints
• API keys are encrypted on your machine, never sent to our cloud
• Every tool call is visible: the chat logs a receipt for each step

7Knowledge base

The fourth workspace — your second brain. Entries are standard Markdown: data sovereignty is entirely yours.

Entries & folders

• Folders nest freely with context menus, copy / cut / move — a file-explorer layout
• Rich-text (Milkdown) and source (CodeMirror) editing, switch anytime
• Rich-text extras: highlight selections, adjust line spacing; insert tables with row/column controls and draggable column widths / row heights
• To-dos & calendar: a built-in to-do panel (list / knowledge-card views + category tree), capture to-dos inside entries, an in-app month calendar; canvas nodes show to-do badges in amber when overdue, with archiving and auto-clean
• Bind a local root folder for write-through sync: every entry lands as a real root/folder/entry.md on disk — visible in your file explorer, openable anywhere
• Version snapshots auto-kept (up to 10), roll back anytime

Collecting & importing

• One-click web clipping (with the browser extension), or paste a URL to import the article body
• Word / Excel / PPT / PDF / HTML / Markdown / TXT / RTF / CSV / EPUB / OpenDocument batch import, auto-converted to Markdown entries
• Evernote ENEX exports and Notion export packages import directly; email accounts sync via IMAP (attachments included); Readwise highlights sync
• “New note” for quick capture, rich-text and source both
• Scanned PDFs get automatic OCR

Search & tidy

• Tags + full-text search find things fast; Ctrl+F find & replace works on KB bodies too
• One-click AI tidy: auto-categorize, rename, tag — snapshot first, roll back in one click if unhappy

Canvas linkage

All three canvases “save to knowledge base” with their source recorded; double-click an entry’s source in the KB to return to that exact canvas and keep editing.

8Knowledge graph

The fifth workspace: weaving library knowledge into a web — “I noted it” becomes “I can see it and look it up.” One web for the library, one graph per topic.

Generation

• Entities and relations extract deterministically from entries (outline levels, flow directions, canvas structure, tag co-occurrence) — zero AI dependency, idempotent rebuilds
• AI-enhanced extraction adds implicit relations the rules miss
• Library graph + topic graphs: the whole library as one web, a topic / folder as its own graph page, saved and shared with the file

Browsing & interaction

• Tree / force-directed / type-ring layouts switch in one click
• Click an entity to focus its neighborhood, filter by type, and let big graphs auto-fold
• Click an entity to trace its source entries, double-click to jump to the original text — provenance never lost

Analysis & output

• Graph stats: degree centrality, isolated-node detection
• Analysis reports save back to the knowledge base as searchable entries
• A neighborhood expands in one click into a mind-map page: the center entity and relations become an editable map
• AI reads the graph: a topic summarized into a mind map / flowchart / architecture, landing on canvas for further editing
• Whole-graph PNG export

9Export & delivery

A finished diagram is just the start — export is friction-free: 7 formats to choose from, and the watermark toggle lives in the panel (members can customize watermark text and spacing).

No export needed to present: F5 enters fullscreen presentation, playing pages in order (chart animations fire on turn), with a pen for annotations and Esc to exit.

10FAQ

Where does my data live? Is it safe?

Canvas data stays on your own computer in .xdt single-file multi-page format; knowledge-base entries are standard Markdown (landing as .md files when a root folder is bound). All local by default, offline editing works, and no server stores your content without your knowledge; cloud sync and team collaboration are opt-in.

Why “data sovereignty” for the knowledge base?

Entries are pure Markdown — bind a local root and they land as real .md files in folder structure: open with any editor, sync with any tool, never locked in.

Do exports carry watermarks?

No. Exports are watermark-free by default; the toggle lives in the export panel under your control, and members can customize watermark text and spacing.

How do three diagram types share one file?

One file manages pages via tabs — each page picks its canvas type: mind-map, flow and architecture pages coexist, and mind maps convert to flowcharts in one click.

Does AI cost extra?

AI needs a model API configured (e.g. DeepSeek) and bills per that provider’s token rules. The app provides the AI canvas capabilities at no markup.

Is my config / API key safe?

API keys are encrypted on your machine via Electron’s secure storage — never stored in plain text.

Which platforms are supported?

The desktop app targets Windows first (v1.0, installer + portable), installers coming soon; macOS is in preparation. The core is pure web tech — the browser version has no OS limits and works online right now (see Try Online), on Windows / macOS / Linux.

Can I get a refund?

Yearly and semi-annual plans come with a 7-day, no-questions-asked full refund from the date of the charge. Quarterly plans are non-refundable after purchase, and yearly/semi-annual past the 7-day window are non-refundable too. AI point packs are refundable within 7 days only if no points have been used. See the full Refund Policy.

What happens to my plan after a refund?

The subscription deactivates as soon as the refund is processed — nothing lingers, and you can subscribe again at any time. Refunds go back to the original payment method (banks typically take 5–10 business days to show it).

How do I cancel auto-renewal?

Anytime — write to support@memobrain.net. Cancellation stops future charges; you keep access until the end of the period you already paid for.