Capture

Write atoms straight into your notes in the Atomus editor. No separate card editor, no save step.

Capturing in Atomus means writing. Open a note in the editor, write an atom on its own line, and keep going. Atomus finds it and schedules it.

Where to write

Your Inbox note. Every vault has one at its root. Use it for quick, unsorted things you want to keep.
Any note in your vault. Atoms can live right next to the notes they came from, like a book summary or lecture notes.
Outside Atomus. Notes are plain Markdown files, so you can add atoms with any editor. Atomus picks them up when it sees the file change.

Writing the atom

The simplest atom is one line with ==.

What did Ebbinghaus show in 1885? == Memory decays fastest in the first day after learning

Everything before == is the front, everything after is the back. On review you see the front, try to recall the back, and rate yourself.

Atomus also reads multi-line answers, multiple choice, numbered lists, cloze ({{...}}), and tasks with a deadline (- [ ] ... @YYYY-MM-DD). Creating atoms walks through every shape with examples.

Let AI write the atoms

If you'd rather write plain text first, put the cursor on a line and press ⌥ A, or click the atomify button next to the line. Atomus asks your AI provider for atoms and writes them under that line. This needs an AI provider. More in Extraction.

Atomify turns plain writing into atoms. You still choose what stays.

After you write

The note saves automatically.
Every atom in it enters the review queue.
FSRS schedules each new atom's first review.

Delete the line and the atom is gone from the queue too. The note is the source of truth.