Inbox & capture

The core idea

Capture everything, process later. The inbox is the place where unprocessed thoughts land before you decide what they are and where they belong.

AuroraDocs doesn't force a fixed inbox. Instead, it gives you the tools to build the capture → process → organise flow that suits your brain.

Capturing

Quick capture (⌘J)

The fastest way to capture anything, from anywhere in the app. Press ⌘J, type your thought, and press ⌘Enter to save into the inbox without leaving what you were doing. The dedicated Save & open button instead takes you to the new note.

Quick-captured items land in your workspace without a type, tag, or parent — deliberately unprocessed. You'll deal with them later.

Journal

Your journal entry (⌘D) is a natural scratch pad for the day. Brain-dumps, meeting notes, passing thoughts — write them here first. At the end of the day (or during a weekly review), process what's worth keeping.

The /todo block

Inside any page or journal entry, type /todo to add a quick checklist item. For lightweight tasks that don't need their own page, this is often enough.

Your inbox: a Set

Build your inbox as a Set filtered to show recently captured, unprocessed pages:

type = Page OR Task
AND processed = false   ← a custom Checkbox property
AND created in the last 7 days

Or more simply, just a Set sorted by Created date (newest first) — everything you've captured appears at the top.

Setting it up:

1. Create a new Set (⌘N → Set).
2. Name it Inbox.
3. Filter: created in last 7 days, or leave unfiltered if you prefer to see everything.
4. Sort: Created → Newest first.
5. Pin it to the top of your sidebar.

Now it behaves like a traditional inbox: new captures bubble to the top, and you work through them one by one.

Processing

Processing means making a decision about each item:

Decision	Action
Actionable, quick	Convert to a Task, set a due date
Actionable, project	Move it into a Project page or Set
Reference	Tag it, give it the right type, file it
Someday / maybe	Tag someday or move to a Someday Set
Trash	Delete it

Converting pages

You can change a page's type at any time — a quick-captured Page can become a Task, a Project, or a Book. Go to the page and click the type badge next to the title.

The "processed" checkbox

Add a custom Checkbox property called Processed (or Reviewed) to your captures. Check it when you've made a decision. Your inbox Set filters these out automatically, so your inbox only shows what still needs attention.

Processing workflows

Daily processing (light)

Each morning or evening, open today's journal entry and your Inbox Set. Work through the items captured since yesterday. Process each one in 2 minutes or less.

Weekly review (deeper)

Once a week, do a full sweep:

1. Open the Inbox Set — clear everything.
2. Open each active Project page — is it still moving? What's the next action?
3. Scan your Someday list — does anything belong in active projects now?
4. Create next week's tasks.

AuroraDocs ships with a Weekly review template in Settings → Templates that structures this process.

Tips

• Don't organise while capturing. Trust the inbox. The goal of capture is speed — zero friction. Organisation happens in processing.
• Keep the inbox visible. Pin the Inbox Set to the top of your sidebar so it's always one click away.
• Choose how inbox items open and continue. In Settings → Preferences → Default open mode, the Inbox row can follow each item's normal open behavior or force inbox clicks to open as a full page, popup, or split view. The Inbox page's header gear exposes the same open-mode control plus triage-specific settings like sort order and whether Aurora should stay on the current row or open the next item after you process something.
• Choose the triage source. The Inbox page's header gear can use Auto, AuroraAI, BYOK, or Local rules for type, tag, and related-item suggestions. Auto prefers AuroraAI when the workspace, plan, and consent settings allow it, then falls back to BYOK and finally local rules. Suggestions show a source badge, and if AI triage does not work Aurora shows an error-style notice that it fell back to the local heuristic model. E2EE workspaces ask before sending the selected item's decrypted title/body preview, existing tag names, and candidate related-page titles to hosted AuroraAI.
• Use keyboard triage when you want speed. In the Inbox page, J / K move between items, Enter opens the active item, P / S open it in popup or split, X marks it processed, Delete trashes it, N converts to note, T converts to task, Shift+P converts to page, and Space toggles selection on the active row.
• Process, don't hoard. An inbox with 500 unread items is noise. Aim for inbox zero at least once a week.