↳ Atoms

Privacy

Last updated 7 August 2026.

Atoms is an Obsidian plugin, plus a small companion app for Android called Atoms Capture. Your notes are markdown files in your own vault, on your own devices. This page describes the only cases where text leaves your device, and who holds what. It covers both pieces.

Your vault

Atoms reads your daily notes and writes atom files into one folder you choose. It does not move your files, does not rewrite existing lines in your daily notes, and does not upload your vault anywhere as part of normal use.

Atoms Capture, the Android app

Atoms Capture is a separate free app. It writes a stamped line into Atoms System/Inbox.md in your vault, and the Obsidian plugin picks those lines up later. On its own the app does nothing else.

• No backend. The app holds no internet permission. There is no account, no analytics, and no server of ours for it to talk to. What you type goes into a file on your phone and stops there.
• Your vault folder. You point the app at the folder your vault lives in, using Android's own folder picker. It reads and writes inside that folder and nowhere else. You can withdraw that access in Android settings whenever you want.
• Dictation goes to Android. If you use the microphone, the app hands the audio to Android's speech recognition, which on most phones is Google's and may send the audio to Google to turn it into text. That is the one place a capture can leave your phone before it reaches your vault. We never receive the audio, and the app does not record or keep it. Type instead of speaking if you would rather nothing left the phone.

Play will not let a capture app scan the whole phone. Pick the vault folder, or pick Documents if that is where your vaults live, and the app lists what it finds inside that grant.

Everything below applies to the Obsidian plugin, once those lines are in your vault, and only where you have turned the feature on.

Processing captures

Classification uses an Anthropic model, so the text of the captures being processed is sent to Anthropic. There are two cases:

• Your own API key. Requests go directly from your device to Anthropic under your key. We never see them and never receive your key. The key is stored in your operating system's secret storage, not in the plugin's settings file.
• Atoms Plus. Requests go through our service under our Anthropic account so you do not need a key. Capture text passes through our service in order to be classified.

We do not use your notes to train models, and our Anthropic usage is under terms that do not permit training on submitted content.

Ask, if you turn it on

Ask is off by default. When you enable it, Atoms mirrors your flat atoms folder to our service so an assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT can search and cite it through MCP. Specifically:

• Only flat markdown files in your configured atoms folder are mirrored. Daily notes and the rest of your vault are not.
• The mirror is one directional. Note bodies are never written back into your vault from the cloud copy.
• Deleting an atom in your vault removes it from the mirror on the next sync. Turning Ask off and clearing the mirror removes the cloud copy.
• When you use Ask from an assistant, that assistant's provider (Anthropic for Claude, OpenAI for ChatGPT) receives the note content returned to answer your question. That is their surface, under their privacy policy, not ours.

Account and billing

A Plus subscription requires an email address, used to identify your subscription and to send sign in links and billing notices. Payment is handled by Stripe. We do not receive or store your card number.

Field notes (marketing email)

If you join Field notes on this website, we store the email address you submit so we can send occasional notes on using a second brain in real life - capture, recall, tools like Claude and Obsidian, and how other people do it (a few times a year, not a drip). Replies you send about your own practice may be quoted in a later note with your permission. That list is separate from Plus sign-in and billing mail. Creating a Plus account or checking out does not put you on Field notes.

• Provider. Email delivery and the contact list are handled by Resend on our behalf.
• Unsubscribe. Every Field notes message includes an unsubscribe link. You can also use that link from a past message.
• Deletion. Unsubscribe stops marketing mail. To request deletion of your marketing contact record, open an issue on GitHub with the email address you used.

Analytics on this website

We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and cannot follow you to other sites. No advertising, and no third-party trackers.

What we do not do

• No cookies set by this website.
• No selling or sharing of your notes or your email address.
• No training on your notes.

Deleting your data

Cancel from Settings inside the plugin. To have the cloud mirror and your account record removed, open an issue or contact us through GitHub. Your vault files are yours and are unaffected either way. For Field notes marketing contacts, see the section above (unsubscribe vs deletion).

Questions

Atoms is an independent project. Reach us through GitHub Issues.