The features we said no to

Every small product gets pulled towards becoming a big one. Users ask for reasonable things. Competitors ship features. The roadmap fills with “while we’re at it”. For a tool whose entire value is that it is fast and gets out of the way, each addition is a risk.

So it is worth writing down the things Jot deliberately does not do, and why. Some of these may change; most will not.

1. Rich text in the capture box

Bold, headings and bullets would make captured notes prettier. They would also add formatting controls to a box whose job is to take one line in four seconds. Plain text stays. Jot is not a note app.

2. A list picker in the overlay

A dropdown to choose a list is the most requested addition to any capture form. It is also a decision at the worst possible moment. >list in the sentence does the same job for people who know where it goes, and costs nothing for people who do not. See one field is a design decision.

3. AI that files things for you

Automatically deciding where a capture belongs, or rewriting it, would save a click and occasionally lose meaning. Jot’s AI features suggest; you confirm. Nothing is auto-filed. See AI that asks before it acts.

4. A required account

Accounts make analytics, sync and support easier for the developer. They make capture slower and data less private for the user. Capture, parsing, reminders and search work with no account, and that is not changing.

5. Our own AI subscription

Charging for AI would mean routing your text through our servers and adding a margin on top of the model provider’s price. Bring-your-own-key means requests go straight from your PC to Anthropic or OpenAI, and the feature is free. See local-first and bring-your-own-key.

6. Transcription and meeting recording

Recording meetings needs consent, uploads audio to a service, and turns a capture tool into a surveillance tool. The Meeting tab, coming in the next release, works from lines you type. See AI meeting notetakers vs writing it yourself.

7. Reading the Windows accent colour

An early version followed the user’s Windows accent colour. It meant the app looked different on every PC and clashed with its own two-colour meaning (amber for todos, clay for notes). Fixed accents won. See when the app stopped imitating Windows.

8. A settings button in the overlay

Settings are something you visit occasionally on purpose. A gear in the overlay would be one more thing to see on every capture. See the overlay has no settings button.

How we decide

The test is the same every time: does this make the four-second capture slower, or make the app less trustworthy with your data? If yes to either, it goes somewhere else or nowhere. The anti-persona in Jot’s product spec - anyone who wants an editor, transcription or a knowledge base - is a list of people we will disappoint on purpose, so that the people who want fast capture are not.

Basecamp’s Shape Up describes the general idea well: deciding what not to do is as much product work as deciding what to build.

Jot is on the Microsoft Store. If there is something you think belongs in it, the support page is the place to say so.

Jot is a quick-capture app for Windows: one hotkey, one line, back to what you were doing. What it is, or what is still unproven.