Introduction to Lino

Lino, Make Your Ideas Spark.

If you've used your share of note apps and AI tools, you've probably felt something like this: producing output keeps getting easier, but actually thinking something through keeps getting harder. Lino is built to close that gap — a space that truly belongs to you, where your ideas can land, grow, and connect with one another.

In that space, you and AI sit at the same table. AI works from your notes, references, and lines of thought — not from a blank chat box every time. What you really want is often something you can't spell out in a prompt upfront; it emerges as you read, compare, and ask questions together. And when an idea is ready to become real, Lino can use Sparks to turn the text beside your canvas into interactive mini-apps — so knowledge isn't only recorded. It can run.

Core concepts

To understand Lino, start with four words: canvas, connection, artifact, and Lino AI.

Infinite Canvas. Picture an infinitely extending desk — your materials don't have to be squeezed into page after page of documents. They can be laid out on a single canvas instead. Complex reading, comparing, and writing no longer feel like scrolling through a narrow column; they feel more like working a puzzle across a wide table.

Connection. In Lino, information rarely stands alone. Link anything together, then hit the connection button to see what else your current content touches — even when that other idea lives on a different canvas. Connections here aren't decoration. They're the veins of your knowledge network.

Artifact. Cards, images, links, sketches, tables, Sparks — these are the basic units on a canvas, and we call them artifacts. Every artifact you create is automatically stored in the Artifacts Gallery. The same card can appear on multiple canvases; edit it once, and it updates everywhere. The canvas is the stage; the artifacts are what you actually accumulate.

Lino AI. It lives inside your knowledge graph, and it understands your cards, connections, and way of thinking. Treat it as a companion at your side: spot patterns together, fill in missing links, or — when the moment is right — hand a half-formed idea to Sparks and turn it into something you can actually use with your hands.

Why Lino?

The sections above describe what Lino is. What follows is why we believe it deserves a place in how you think day to day.

1. Help you think clearly — not just produce more 🧠

Using AI to write, generate images, and summarize is getting easier for everyone; but thinking something through on your own isn't getting easier along with it. Lino puts "think clearly" before "get it done" — first a space wide enough to think in, then AI to help. You don't have to define the goal on day one. Spread out your materials and let the question surface on its own.

2. Panoramic thinking, not scroll-shaped notes 📜

Traditional notes push you down a narrow feed — scroll to the bottom, and the details at the top have already faded. Lino widens the view: related sources can sit in front of you at once. Which passages need comparing? Which ideas contradict each other? You can see it in one glance. Lino can take notes, of course, but it's built for the messier work — the kind that jumps back and forth.

3. AI starts from your materials, not from zero 🤖

Many AI products assume you'll figure out the right question before you ask anything. Lino AI takes a different path: it sees what you've already written, linked, and arranged on the canvas. So the conversation doesn't have to begin with introducing yourself from scratch — you can point at a card and say, "connect this line to that reference," or "based on these notes, what am I missing?"

4. Turn knowledge into interactive tools with Sparks ✨

Picture this: you're organizing drum-set study notes on the canvas, and you want to feel the rhythm yourself — so you tell the AI, "build me a drum simulator." A few seconds later, a playable mini-app appears in the sidebar. That's a Spark: simulators, charts, slide decks, Kanban boards — all grown from the task at hand. Some you use once and set aside; others slowly become long-term tools of your own.

5. Connections you can use — not fireworks 🎆

We've all seen "impressive" mind maps: dense nodes, pretty screenshots — and no way to trace where an idea actually came from. Lino takes a more practical view. Connections are searchable and manageable. How many times is this artifact referenced? What does it depend on? When you need to trace something back, you're not lost in a firework display.

6. Minimal, so thinking gets the time 🤺

Note apps can eat a whole afternoon in layout, templates, icons, and colors. Lino deliberately narrows the choices: create, edit, connect — and, when you're working with AI, the occasional handoff to Sparks. No nested settings menus, no switches to agonize over. Save your mental energy for the content, not the interface.

Where to go next

By now you should have a rough picture of Lino. If you want to find your bearings first, start with the layout tour; if you'd rather dive in, cards and connections are great entry points.

• Layout Tour — a one-minute map of the interface.
• Lino AI — meet your AI thinking partner on the canvas.
• Sparks — learn how intent becomes interactive mini-apps.
• Cards & Concepts — start with the basic building block.
• Connections — weave notes into a knowledge web.
• Canvas & Spaces — organize your work across canvases and spaces.
• Other Canvas Objects — images, links, sketches, tables, and the Artifacts Gallery.
• Panels — card views and the right-side tool panels.