Your life in a single file
SEO Note

PM notes tree + AI status digests

Status meetings produce paragraphs. Stakeholders want five bullets. Between those two shapes sits a week of chat noise, a spreadsheet nobody trusts, and a risk that somehow never made it onto the slide. A project manager’s job is not to feed the whole week into a model — it is to keep a thin, dated tree of risks, decisions, and meeting outcomes, then ask AI only for packaging.

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 (one local file, no account; 2.1 is a ~121 MB Electron installer, the classic 1.3.34 build ~2.5 MB). Use it beside Jira/Sheets, not instead of them. The file is your private working truth and prompt kit, and the AI in 2.1 — tasks, a weekly briefing, a commit message — runs on an endpoint you connect; shared trackers stay shared. Same spine: local notes as source of truth.

PM split

In SEO Note
  • Project goal & constraints
  • Risks with owners / dates
  • Meeting notes → decisions
  • Open questions
In the AI chat
  • Status digest drafts
  • Risk rewrites for exec tone
  • Agenda suggestions
  • Disposable “what did we miss?”
PM.sn
  Projects
    Mobile checkout — launch May
      Goal / constraints
      Risks
        R3 — payment partner SLA
      Meetings
        2026-04-10 standup notes
        Decisions (rolled up)
      Open questions
      Prompts
        Weekly status digest
  Stakeholders (optional cheat sheet)
  Archive

Roll decisions up after each meeting so you do not hunt through dated children. Risks need an owner name or they are wishes.

Paste + prompt

Prompt — Weekly status digest
Context: [Goal + Risks + Decisions since last digest + Open questions]
Audience: busy stakeholders, 60 seconds.
Task: green/yellow/red one-liner; 5 bullets max; risks only if still open.
Rules: no new dates or % complete unless present in context; mark UNVERIFIED guesses.
Do not paste: salary data, HR notes, full customer PII from CRM exports, credentials, or every Slack dump. Curate. Freelancer-side client trees: freelancer notes tree. Privacy checklist: what not to paste.

Friday 20 minutes

1 Update Risks and Decisions from the week
2 Copy Goal + Risks + new Decisions
3 Run Weekly status digest
4 Edit bullets in your voice
5 Paste only the final into email / chat

Pitfalls

  • Digest becomes the plan — never write % complete only in the chat
  • Meeting notes without a Decisions rollup
  • One project node for the whole portfolio
  • AI inventing “alignment” you did not have

When to use something else

Live multiplayer roadmaps, resource leveling, and company OKR tools stay in those systems. SEO Note is the quiet layer for what you need to remember between tools — and for prompts you reuse. Token-cost awareness when digests get fat: token cost of note workflows.

Next steps

  1. Create one active project with Goal / Risks / Meetings / Decisions
  2. Backfill two real risks with owners
  3. File yesterday’s meeting under Meetings; roll Decisions
  4. Run one digest; send only after you edit
  5. Back up the file

Download SEO Note free and stop rebuilding status from memory every Friday.

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

Does this replace Jira or Sheets for project work? Use SEO Note beside Jira or Sheets, not instead of them. The local file is your private working truth and prompt kit, while shared trackers stay shared.

What exactly do I paste for a weekly status digest? The goal and constraints, the open risks, the decisions made since the last digest and the open questions. Ask for a green, yellow or red one-liner with five bullets at most, and only risks still open.

What should I never paste into a status chat? Salary data, HR notes, full customer personal data from CRM exports, credentials and every Slack dump. Curate the slice instead.

How long should the Friday status digest take? The suggested routine is 20 minutes: update risks and decisions from the week, copy the goal, risks and new decisions, run the digest, edit the bullets in your own voice, then send only the final version.

Do my project risks need an owner? Risks need an owner name or they are wishes, so backfill two real risks with owners. Roll decisions up after each meeting so you are not hunting through dated meeting notes.

Related: Freelancer tree · Developer tree · Daily notes + AI · PARA method · Templates