Extraction
Let the AI read your note and draft atoms for you. You still decide what makes the review queue.
Extraction is Atomus's AI path. You write freely, press atomify, and Atomus reads the text, picks out what could become atoms, and drafts front/back pairs for you to review.
It's the opposite of ==. With ==, you decide the structure and Atomus just stores it. With extraction, Atomus proposes the structure and you approve.
When to use it
Most short captures don't need extraction. A single fact, a quick definition, a quote. You can write these as front == back in a second, and that's always faster than any AI call.
Extraction starts to pay off when:
- You wrote a paragraph or more and several ideas could become separate atoms
- You're not sure what's worth keeping and want a second opinion
- You pasted a chunk of an article or transcript and want to mine it for atoms
How it works
Click the atomify button in the capture window. Atomus reads the whole note and returns a list of suggested atoms, each with its own front and back.
For each suggestion, you can accept it, tweak the front or back before accepting, or reject it. Nothing enters your review queue without your OK. Rejected suggestions don't come back.
What Atomus looks for
Extraction works best on dense, factual text. Claims, definitions, cause and effect, relationships between named things. It struggles with opinions, repetitions of the same idea in different words, or fragments that only make sense with surrounding context.
If you find yourself editing the same kind of suggestion over and over, consider just writing the atom directly with ==. The AI is a shortcut, not a requirement.