The messy middle needed a home
Most productivity tools work best after something has become a document, task, bookmark, or finished note. Root is for the step before that: rough material worth keeping, close to its source and easy to pick up again.
Root is not meant to replace every tool. It gives working text somewhere to land before you decide what it should become.
Who Root is for
For work that is still moving.
Root is for people who collect research, ideas, tasks, and prompts while the work is still taking shape—especially when you want notes beside the web without organizing everything before it becomes useful.
See Root beside the web in Chrome Explore the capture-first iPhone app
Our principles
What Root promises.
Root is built around a simple boundary: your workspace belongs to you. You decide what stays, what leaves, and when another tool becomes part of the workflow.
Your workspace belongs to you
Root is private by default and portable. Core local use should remain useful without a hosted Root account.
Capture before you organize
Research Draft and Inbox should let working text land before you choose a folder, format, or final destination.
You choose what leaves Root
Context Handoff, copy, share, and export should remain deliberate. Root should never treat the whole workspace as context by default.
AI is a collaborator, not the foundation
AI can collaborate without becoming Root’s foundation. Root should work beside the tools you choose without depending on any one of them.
Friction has to earn its place
New capabilities should make the workspace more useful than the friction or dependency they introduce.
These principles guide product decisions, data handling, and how Root grows.
Three turning points
How Root got here.
The moments that changed what Root could do. The changelog keeps the full record.
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A private place for unfinished work
Capture, Inbox, tasks, Snippets, and working text established Root’s foundation.
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Root reached Chrome and iPhone
The private workspace became a public product on the Chrome Web Store and App Store.
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Research Draft moved Root beside the web
Chrome’s side panel gained an automatically saved draft, source capture, and a deliberate path into notes or Inbox.
Try Root
Choose where Root fits.
Start beside the web in Chrome or take the capture-first workspace with you on iPhone.
Built independently in Winnipeg, Canada.
If you run a tester community, help useful software reach the right people, or care about user-controlled AI, Root is open to a thoughtful conversation. Contact Root.