What Gravity Isn't For (And Why That Might Be the Point)

Gravity doesn't have folders. It doesn't have tags. There's no plugin ecosystem, no bidirectional links, no knowledge graph visualization, no daily notes template, no Zettelkasten workflow, no API for third-party integrations.

If you're keeping score, that's a lot of missing features.

But here's the thing: every one of those features solves a problem created by the previous feature. And at some point, you have to ask whether the problem being solved is "I need to capture and use my thoughts" or "I need to maintain this system I built to capture and use my thoughts."

By the end of this post, you'll understand:

• Why most "power features" in note-taking apps create more problems than they solve
• What Gravity deliberately excludes—and the cognitive cost those features carry
• How to tell if you're organizing notes or procrastinating with extra steps

The feature treadmill

Here's a pattern I've seen play out dozens of times—in my own life and in every note-taking community online.

You start with a simple system. Maybe Apple Notes, maybe a text file. It works. Then you hit a limit: too many notes, can't find things, no structure. So you upgrade to something more powerful. Notion, Obsidian, Roam. You get folders. Tags. Linked references. A graph view that makes your knowledge look like a neural network.

For about three weeks, this feels like a superpower.

Then the weight starts. You're not just capturing ideas anymore—you're maintaining a system. Which folder does this go in? Should I tag this #ideas or #projects or both? Wait, I created a new tag last week that might apply—what was it called? This note references that note, but should the link be bidirectional? The graph is getting cluttered; maybe I need to reorganize.

The tool that was supposed to free your thinking now occupies your thinking.

I'm not saying these features are useless. For some workflows—academic research, complex project management, collaborative wikis—they're genuinely necessary. But for personal note-taking? For capturing what's on your mind so you can move on with your day?

The features become the friction.

What Gravity doesn't do (a partial list)

Let me be specific about what's not in Gravity:

No folders. You can't organize notes into categories. Everything lives in one stream. If you want to find something old, you scroll or search.

No tags. There's no tagging system. You can use prefixes like todo: or read: for filtering, but there's no taxonomy to maintain.

No note linking. You can't create [[wikilinks]] or build a knowledge graph. Notes don't reference other notes.

No templates. There's no daily note template, no weekly review structure, no pre-built frameworks.

No plugins. The feature set is fixed. You can't extend it with community add-ons.

No export to 47 formats. Your notes sync across your Apple devices. That's it.

Reading that list, you might think: "So it's just... worse?"

Hold up. Let's look at what each of those missing features actually costs.

The cost of folders

Folders seem obviously useful. Put similar things together. Basic organization.

But every folder is a decision. And not just one decision—a decision that you'll need to remember and be consistent about forever. Where does this note go: Work or Projects? Ideas or Research? And what happens when a note spans categories?

You end up with one of three outcomes:

1. A carefully maintained hierarchy that requires ongoing effort to use correctly
2. A mess of folders where things end up in arbitrary places
3. A "inbox" or "unsorted" folder that becomes the default dumping ground—defeating the purpose of folders entirely

The hidden cost isn't filing a single note. It's the cumulative cognitive load of a thousand micro-decisions, plus the anxiety of "did I put that in the right place?"

Gravity's answer: there's only one place. The stream. Put it there and move on.

The cost of tags

Tags were supposed to solve the folder problem. Now notes can belong to multiple categories! Just tag them!

In practice, tags create a different problem: tag proliferation and inconsistency. Is it #writing or #write? #idea or #ideas? Did I create a #projectX tag or is it #project-x? The more tags you have, the harder it is to remember what you've already created.

And here's the deeper issue: tags require you to predict how you'll want to find things later. At the moment of capture, you're making taxonomic decisions about future retrieval. That's exactly the kind of cognitive overhead that slows you down.

Gravity's answer: no tags, no taxonomy. If you want lightweight filtering, use prefixes (todo:, read:). They're just text—no system to maintain.

The cost of linking

Bidirectional links and knowledge graphs are the current darlings of the "tools for thought" movement. Connect everything! See the patterns emerge! Your notes become a second brain!

Here's what that looks like in practice for most people: you spend time linking notes together, building a graph, occasionally gazing at the pretty visualization—and then rarely actually use those links for anything.

The graph becomes a trophy, not a tool.

Links also create a new form of maintenance: keeping connections current, checking if old links still make sense, deciding whether new notes should connect to existing clusters. Every link is a relationship you have to remember exists.

For researchers building complex arguments across sources, links are valuable. For most personal note-taking, they're architecture that never gets lived in.

Gravity's answer: notes don't link to notes. Each thought stands alone. The only relationship is time—newer thoughts at the top, older thoughts sinking down.

The cost of "power"

There's a recurring pattern here. Every "power feature" solves a problem by adding complexity. Then the complexity becomes a problem, and the solution is another power feature.

Folders create rigid hierarchies → Tags allow cross-categorization → Tags proliferate → Search becomes essential → Search results are overwhelming → Links provide context → Link graphs get cluttered → Filtering and views help manage the graph → Now you're maintaining views...

It's not that any single feature is bad. It's that they compound in a specific direction: toward more system, more overhead, more decisions per thought captured.

Meanwhile, the original goal—get ideas out of your head quickly so you can think about other things—recedes behind the interface.

What Gravity is for (precisely)

Gravity is for one thing: capturing thoughts with zero friction and trusting that what matters will surface.

That's it. Open the app, you're already typing. Your thought goes to the top of the stream. Close the app. Done.

When you review, you scroll. Things that catch your eye—ideas still alive, todos still relevant—you swipe right, they jump back to the top. Everything else keeps sinking.

There's no system to maintain because there's no system. The stream is the system. Time and attention do the organizing.

This means Gravity is specifically not for:

• Project management. If you need task dependencies, timelines, assignments—use a project management tool. That's a genuinely different job.
• Team collaboration. Gravity is for solo thinkers. There are no shared notes, no comments, no multiplayer anything.
• Research wikis. If you're building a knowledge base across hundreds of sources with complex interconnections, you need a tool designed for that.
• Long-form writing. Gravity captures fragments, not drafts. Write your essays somewhere else.

What remains is a tool for the most common note-taking use case: a place to dump what's on your mind, fast, so you can focus on whatever comes next.

The real question

Here's the thing I keep coming back to: why do we take notes?

The conventional answer is retrieval. You write something down so you can find it later. Therefore, the tool should help you find things. Therefore, organization features.

But most notes aren't retrieved. They're written once and never looked at again. The ones that do matter tend to surface naturally—you remember them because they're still on your mind, or you stumble across them while looking for something else.

What if the real function of note-taking isn't retrieval? What if it's relief—offloading thoughts from working memory so you can focus on the present moment?

In that frame, the best note-taking tool isn't the one with the best retrieval system. It's the one with the lowest capture friction. The one that gets out of your way fastest.

Gravity is built for that frame.

Who this isn't for (genuinely)

Let me be honest: if you love building intricate systems, if the act of organizing brings you joy, if your work genuinely requires complex knowledge management—Gravity isn't your tool.

Some people thrive with Obsidian vaults and Notion databases. The organizational overhead isn't a cost for them; it's part of their process.

That's real, and Gravity isn't trying to serve that use case.

But if you've ever felt like your note-taking system became a second job... if you have more empty databases than full ones... if you suspect that reorganizing is procrastination in disguise...

Then maybe the problem isn't that you haven't found the right system yet.

Maybe the answer is less system altogether.

Gravity is what that looks like.