Daily notes → weekly AI review

Daily notes fail in two opposite ways. Either you write nothing because the system is heavy, or you write everything and never look back — a graveyard of “Tue: weird meeting, fix later.” AI makes the second failure feel productive: dump the week into a chat, get a shiny summary, feel organized for twenty minutes. Next Monday the truth is still scattered across threads you will not reopen.

Three builds ship from this site. SEO Note 2.1 is the current one: an Electron app (about 121 MB installer) for Windows 10/11 64-bit and Linux x64, with Markdown, the tree editor, AI talking to a model you connect — a local one or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, a web clipper and git sync of the file. For Android 6.0 and newer there is a release-signed APK (~10 MB) of the same interface; on the phone notes live as a folder of Markdown files on the device, and passwords, sync, the clipper and AI answer there with an explicit refusal. The classic build 1.3.34 (~2.5 MB, Win32) stays on the download page for Windows 7, 8 and 32-bit PCs, where 2.1 does not install; its notes file is .seo. All three work offline with no account: pick your build, or read how 2.1 and 1.3.34 differ.

SEO Note is a free Windows tree outliner for a local file you control. No cloud memory and no model in the box — the AI in 2.1 calls an endpoint you connect (Ollama or LM Studio on this PC, OpenAI, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, your own) and can be switched off. Capture days in the tree; once a week, hand a curated slice to the model, in the app or in any chat; write accepted outcomes back under Projects or Areas. The journal stays yours. The model is a temporary sorter.

Where the work happens

In SEO Note

• Dated day nodes
• Raw bullets you trust
• Weekly outcome nodes
• Links into projects

In the AI chat

• Cluster themes
• Draft next-week focus
• Flag contradictions
• Throwaway rewrites

A tree that survives busy weeks

Do not invent a journaling religion. One parent for days, one for weekly reviews, and pointers into real work. If you already use PARA, hang Daily under Inbox or as a sibling — just keep days out of Archive until the review is done.

Journal.sn
  Daily
    2026-08-18
      Done / blocked / ideas
    2026-08-19
    2026-08-20
  Weekly reviews
    2026-W33
      Themes kept
      Decisions
      Dropped noise
  Projects
    (pointers or short links)
  AI scratch
    2026-W33 raw model dump

Day nodes stay ugly on purpose: Done, Blocked, Ideas. Pretty prose is optional. The weekly node is where you promote what still matters.

What to paste for the weekly pass

Select five to seven day nodes — not the whole year. Strip names you should not send, passwords, medical detail, and client secrets. If a day is mostly “ate lunch,” skip it. Paste Done / Blocked / Ideas only.

Reusable weekly review prompt

You are helping with a weekly personal review. Use only the daily bullets below.
Do not invent tasks I did not write. Do not moralize.
Output:
1) Themes that appear more than once
2) Open loops still blocked
3) 3 focus items for next week (must come from the notes)
4) Bullets that look like noise — list them, do not expand them

DAILY NOTES:
[paste curated days]

Do not paste the entire journal vault, calendar exports with other people’s phone numbers, or health / password lines you jot “just for yourself.” Curate the week; leave the rest local. Accepted outcomes go into Weekly reviews — not left only in the chat.

How-to in one sitting (first week)

1. Create Daily and Weekly reviews parents. Add today’s node with Done / Blocked / Ideas.
2. For the next few evenings, spend three minutes: three bullets max per section. Skip empty sections.
3. On review day, open the last 5–7 days. Delete or redact anything that must not leave the PC.
4. Paste into the chat with the prompt above. Read Themes and Open loops — ignore motivational filler if the model adds any.
5. Create Weekly reviews / YYYY-Www. Write Themes kept, Decisions, and Dropped noise in your own words.
6. If a focus item belongs to a project, add one line under that project (or under PARA Projects). Set a verified date if you follow source of truth.
7. Optionally drop the raw model answer under AI scratch with the week id. Close the chat.

	Chat-only week dump	Tree + curated review
Next Monday	Hunt old threads	Open Weekly reviews
Conflicts	Buried in prose	Named under Decisions
What leaves PC	Often everything	Redacted week slice
Cost / tokens	Grows with vault	Stays roughly flat

Token cost and “dump vs one node” math: AI token cost for notes workflows.

What “Dropped noise” is for

Weekly reviews fail when every bullet gets promoted. Half of a busy week is weather for your brain: a Slack ping, a half-idea, a complaint with no ask. Put those under Dropped noise with a short reason (“duplicate,” “not mine,” “mood”). You are training future-you not to reopen the same loop. The AI list of “noise” is a draft; you decide what actually drops.

If mid-week something becomes a real project, do not wait for Sunday. Spawn a project node and leave a one-line pointer in that day’s Ideas. The weekly pass then confirms rather than discovers. People who only review on Sundays often invent priorities the model suggested but the days never logged — the opposite of a source of truth.

Travel or illness weeks: three day nodes with “low capture” is fine. Skip the AI pass if you have under a screen of bullets; a human skim into Weekly reviews costs nothing and leaks nothing.

Pitfalls

• Writing novels daily — you will quit by Thursday
• Letting the model invent priorities you never logged
• Promoting the AI summary to “truth” without rewriting it
• Reviewing three months at once; the prompt becomes sludge
• SEO Note will not ping you at 9pm. For phone capture there is the 2.1 APK — its own Markdown folder, no sync — which you merge into the desktop tree later
• No live collab journal for a whole team — that stays in the shared tool

Prompt wording you reuse every Friday belongs in a library node — see AI prompt templates. Privacy checklist before paste: what not to paste.

Next steps

1. Add Daily + Weekly reviews to your SEO Note file tonight
2. Log three bullets for today — Done / Blocked / Ideas
3. Book thirty minutes this weekend for one curated review
4. Write accepted outcomes into the weekly node
5. Download SEO Note free (no account) if needed

Keep going

• Tree templates and PDF guide — role and method skeletons you can copy straight into your own tree.
• If this guide helped, you can say hello or grab ready-made trees on the templates page.

Adjacent tools (VPS for local models, courses, VPN) are not stuffed into every paragraph. If an affiliate link appears, it will be labeled and is never required to use SEO Note.

Mini FAQ

How many days of notes should I paste for a review? Select five to seven day nodes, not the whole year, and paste only the Done, Blocked and Ideas lines. If the week holds under a screen of bullets, skip the AI pass and skim it yourself.

How long should writing daily notes take each evening? Around three minutes, with three bullets maximum per section under Done, Blocked and Ideas, skipping empty sections. Day nodes stay ugly on purpose; writing novels daily is how people quit by Thursday.

Where do the useful results from the AI review go? Accepted outcomes go into a dated Weekly reviews node: Themes kept, Decisions and Dropped noise in your own words. A focus item that belongs to a project gets one line under that project.

Does SEO Note remind me to write my evening notes? It will not ping you at 9pm. To capture away from the PC, use the signed 2.1 APK for Android 6.0 and newer: notes live there as a folder of Markdown files with no sync, and you merge that folder into the desktop tree later.

Can my whole team keep one journal in this file? There is no live collab journal for a whole team, so that stays in the shared tool. SEO Note holds a local file you control, with no cloud memory; its AI in 2.1 runs on a model you connect and can be switched off.

Related: Source of truth + AI · PARA in a tree · AI privacy · Token cost · Prompt templates · Freelancer tree · FAQ