Capacities 2025

Posted by satis
Dec 1, 2025 at 08:57 PM

I’ve been quietly tracking the evolution of Capacities. Writer Julian Simpson, whose CRIMPing tendencies are dizzying, recently described it as “consistently the best, most comprehensive, and most fun to use.”

His writing workflow is eclectic bordering on chaotic: IA Writer for certain pieces, Ulysses for long-form work (at least historically), a recent migration of his novel from Ulysses into Scrivener, and parallel co-drafting across IA Writer and Obsidian. It sounds like a mess to me but maybe fragmentation and chaos fuels his creative momentum.

Simpson has experimented with most of the usual suspects in the info-management space. Given that he writes and produces BBC podcasts among other projects, he needs to wrangle arrays of episodes, notes, research, scripts, and ancillary material. He has previously written on his blog about using NotePlan, Craft, and Notion, and as of this summer he appeared to have settled (back) into Notion… though that may no longer be the case. Craft, meanwhile, seems to be a recurring temptation he’s circled back to for a decade.

Capacities’ latest updates now let users supply their own API keys from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, or xAI (previously only OpenAI was supported). The update also introduces Kindle highlights integration - they can now be imported directly into Capacities via email by sending exported highlights to

Release notes: https://capacities.io/whats-new/release-56