Most tools want finished things
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.
Building a tool is making a set of promises. Here are Root's six.
Your workspace belongs to you
Root is private by default and built to stay portable. You can export, back up, recover, and keep using your core workspace without a hosted Root account.
AI is optional, not the foundation
AI can help with the work, but Root does not depend on any one model or provider. The core workspace remains useful without AI at all.
You choose what leaves Root
Sharing, synchronization, and Context Handoff happen through a deliberate action or a visible rule. Root should make clear what is leaving and where it is going.
You remain the authority
AI and automation can help only within the authority you grant. Their output does not become part of your workspace merely because it was generated.
Many ways in, one workspace
Browsers, mobile apps, shortcuts, imports, voice, and AI can be focused entrances, but they should lead back to one understandable workspace rather than competing copies.
Complexity must earn its place
Root adds capabilities only when they solve an observed need and justify the privacy, support, and maintenance burden they create. Simplicity and clarity are worth protecting.
These principles guide what Root builds, what it declines, and how it grows. The Security page and Changelog show how those promises map to the product today.
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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Working text got a private home
Capture, Inbox, tasks, Snippets, and working text established Root's foundation.
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Root became a public product
The private workspace launched on the Chrome Web Store and App Store.
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Research Draft put Root in the reading lane
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.
Chrome · iPhone
Interested in testing Root for Android? The Closed Alpha continues to accept selected testers. Request access
Built independently in Winnipeg, Canada.
If you run a tester community, help thoughtful software reach the right people, or care about user-controlled AI, Root is open to a conversation. Contact Root. About the founder