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How First Thought works, in plain words
Write one thing on your mind and press Capture. First Thought reads it on your own device, decides whether it is an idea or a thought about one, files it, and tells you where it went and why. If you turn on Sort with AI (the app asks once; Settings › Your data changes it), an AI service reads the capture along with the names and descriptions of your ideas — never your thoughts — so it can find the idea a thought belongs to, name a new idea, choose its shelf, and offer to split a capture that holds several things. The receipt says when it did. Offline, or marked Local only, everything is worked out on the phone.
The three words
- Idea
- Something you might make or do. It gets a card of its own, a category, a name you can change, and a place for its thoughts, its checklist and its brief.
- Thought
- A note about an idea — an observation, a question, a worry. A thought can belong to several ideas at once, and it can become an idea of its own later.
- Library
- Everything you keep, in three lists — Ideas, Thoughts, To-dos. A thought the app could not place stays in Thoughts, marked unfiled, with its best guess on the row as a chip; one tap files it there, and nothing changes your library until you tap. A to-do on no idea sits in To-dos with its tick, and if you file it later the idea takes the tick with it.
Where a capture goes
Every capture gets a receipt — “Where this went” — naming what was saved, what was created, and the words that decided it. A wrong filing is one tap from right: the receipt offers the other categories the words touched, Undo puts everything back, and anything the app was not sure about stays a thought in your Library with its likely home offered as a chip.
Local only
The lock on the capture field marks a capture Local only. Anything marked Local only stays on the device it was written on: it is never synced, never backed up to the cloud, and never sent to any AI service. Your data panel (Settings › Your data) counts what is Local only on this device and says where everything else lives.
Signing in
There is no password. Type your email address and press Continue: a six-digit code arrives in your inbox, and typing it signs you in. If a Continue with Google or Continue with Apple button is offered, either one signs you in as the email address on that account — it is the same account, and the code still works on any device where those are not to hand. An address that has never been used gets a new, empty account; nothing is created until you enter the code.
The sign-in email carries a link as well as the code. Tapping the link on this phone works too, but it may open in the browser rather than in the installed app, which is why the screen asks for the code.
Syncing with a computer
Open First Thought in a browser on a computer and sign in with the same email. It is the same library, read from the same cloud copy, and anything you write in one place reaches the other on its own. Local only material never travels — it stays on the device it was written on.
If something is wrong
Undo is on every receipt and in More. A backup file of everything on this device can be taken from Settings › Your data, with the radio off.
To report a problem or ask a question, write to [email protected]. Say which device you were on and what you expected to happen.
Which release is on this device is shown under Settings › About.