Introducing Petrichor

Petrichor is an advanced writing app that fuels a deeper understanding of your interests. It's designed for anyone who loves diving deep into research and making unexpected connections between ideas. By merging an intuitive editor, automated semantic linking of documents, and AI-powered assistance, Petrichor helps you stay organized and uncover new insights as you write.

Petrichor is available for free while in beta, and can be accessed at petrichor.md.

The Idea Behind Petrichor

I started Petrichor as a side project in December 2024. Having used Obsidian for my personal notes, I admired its knowledge graph feature, but found manually linking my notes and ideas to be tedious. I envisioned a tool that could automate this process, not just to save time, but to enhance creativity by suggesting connections I might not have considered.

I also wanted a way to talk to my knowledge base -- to ask questions, get feedback, and explore ideas in a more conversational manner. This led to the development of an AI assistant that could understand the context of my writing and provide relevant information and suggestions.

The result is Petrichor, a writing app that combines the best of note-taking, writing, and AI to create a seamless experience for anyone who loves to write and learn.

Core Features

WYSIWYG

At the core of Petrichor is its intuitive WYSIWYG editor, which allows users to format their documents easily while focusing on the content. The editor supports markdown and KaTeX, and is versatile enough for any type of writing, from academic papers to personal journals.

The editor is also designed to be distraction-free, with a clean interface that puts the focus on your writing. As you write, we automatically index your text and the resources, references, and citations you link to, creating a richer, more connected knowledge graph.

Other features include version history, sharing options, and export to various formats, making it easy to share your ideas with others and publish your work.

Automated Semantic Linking

One of the standout features of Petrichor is automated semantic linking. As you write, Petrichor analyzes your text in real-time, and connects your thoughts to other documents and resources in a graph-based view. This not only makes it easy to see how your ideas relate to each other, but also encourages exploration of related concepts you might have overlooked.

Contextualized AI Agent

Petrichor is also equipped with an AI agent that is fully contextualized with your writing, and can provide tailored suggestions and feedback. Whether you're searching for relevant research papers, requesting help with brainstorming, or seeking clarification on complex topics, the AI assistant is designed to enhance your writing experience.

Daily Insights

Petrichor provides daily insights based on your writing activity, helping you track your progress, identify trends, and discover new connections between your ideas. These insights can be used to fuel further research, spark new ideas, or simply reflect on your writing habits.

Right now, Petrichor only uses ArXiV as its primary source of interesting material for you to read. However, we are working on integrating other sources, such as YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, to provide a more diverse range of content.

Getting Started

To get started with Petrichor, simply visit app.petrichor.md and create an account.

• Writing your first document: Create a new document by clicking the "+" button in the sidebar, and start writing. You can use markdown syntax to format your text, and the editor will automatically render it as you type. You can also use the command menu / while typing to access a helpful list of shortcuts and features.
• Exploring your knowledge graph: You can explore the semantic links between your notes by clicking on the graph icon in the tab bar. This will open a graph view of your document, showing how your ideas are connected to each other and to external resources.
• Interacting with the AI assistant: You can interact with the AI assistant by clicking on the chat icon in the tab bar. The assistant is fully contextualized with your writing, and can provide suggestions, feedback, and answers to your questions based on the content of your notes. It also has access to the resources you link to, enabling it to provide more relevant information.
• Using the command palette: You can access helpful shortcuts by using the command palette. Press Ctrl+P or Cmd+P to open the command palette, and start typing to search for commands. This is a quick way to access features such as creating new documents, viewing recently deleted documents, and more.
• Searching for a document: You can search for a document by clicking on the search icon in the sidebar, and typing in the search bar. You can also use Ctrl+F or Cmd+F to search within a document.
• Using the in-editor AI assistant: You can access the AI assistant directly in the editor by pressing Ctrl+J or Cmd+J. This will open a chat window where you can interact with the assistant while writing.

For a complete list of features and shortcuts, you can access the help menu by clicking on the question mark icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.

Future Roadmap

Petrichor is still in its early stages, and we have many exciting features planned for the future. Some of the key areas we are focusing on include:

• Collaboration: Enabling real-time collaboration on documents, with features such as comments, suggestions, and more.
• Research Agent: Expanding the capabilities of the AI assistant to enable it to perform long-running tasks, such as researching a topic, summarizing a paper, or generating an annotated bibliography.
• Open Source: I am a strong believer in open source software, and plan to open source Petrichor in the future to enable the community to contribute and extend its capabilities. I am also an advocate for data privacy and security, and open sourcing the code will allow users to self-host their own instance of Petrichor.
• Desktop & Mobile Apps: While Petrichor is currently a web app, we plan to release desktop and mobile apps to provide a more seamless writing experience across devices.

Reporting Issues and Feedback

If you encounter any issues while using Petrichor, or have any feedback or suggestions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter, or by email at [email protected]. Your feedback is invaluable in helping me improve Petrichor and make it the best it can be.

You can also view the known issue tracker to see if your issue has already been reported.

Conclusion

Petrichor represents a new era in writing and research, seamlessly blending intuitive note-taking with AI-powered insights. Whether you're capturing fleeting thoughts or complex ideas, Petrichor helps you connect, explore, and create with clarity.

I hope you enjoy using Petrichor as much as I enjoyed creating it. Happy writing!