Curio 34 has support for AI, query based Kanban boards, and a bunch of new features.

I use Curio as a math notebook and as a brainstorming tool. I've been outlining in OmniOutliner and Mellel, which is surprisingly efficient as an outliner. My next project is going to lean heavily on Curio. I may use Obsidian or The Archive as a front end.

There is a psychological boost I get from seeing my planning nicely presented. I've used plenty of tools like vimwiki and have gotten a lot of mileage out of them. Still, it's nice to see things in a publication ready layout and it only takes a little effort in Curio.

For the interested, zengobi.com has details.

See the release notes, here:

https://www.zengobi.com/curio/releasenotes/?v=34

It's inspiring to see developers of apps that get mentioned frequently here, such as Curio's George Browning, offering so many creative features out of a one-person shop year after year for 22 years! He freely explained how he used OpenAI and Anthropic models to build and audit code, using the AI as a tool to refine his ideas and not merely tossing out vibe-coded slop.

Yes, it is inspiring to see Curio continue to evolve. I wrote about version 8 in 2012 for the defunct review site Mac Appstorm. I'm planning an article on Medium to continue the discussion of Curio.

Amontillado, do you use the Instant Document feature in Curio to create Omni Outliner documents in Curio? If so, I am curious how that works.

Steve

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Amontillado, do you use the Instant Document feature in Curio to create Omni Outliner documents in Curio? If so, I am curious how that works.

Steve

Yes, it's a handy feature. First, create a document with any utility you want. OmniOutliner, Aeon Timeline, Mellel (a current fascination), even things like Scrivener that save in packages.

Click in an idea space, then Insert->Instant Document->Add File As Instant Document will let you choose any file on your Mac to enroll as an instant document template.

From that moment forward, in any Curio project, Insert->Instant Document->Personal will show the things you've added. There is a Remove function to retire unneeded documents, too.

Inserting an instant document is like dragging a file into Curio. It appears as an icon or quick look preview and will open with a double-click.

Thank you, Amontillado!

Another thing that's pretty much universally handy in Curio is notes. Everything in Curio has a notes field. If you insert a word processing document either by drag and drop or by instant document, it has notes in a normally hidden pop-up window.

Command\ or View->Notes Inspector opens it up, and that's a nice place to put revision notes if you have more than one version of your document.

I went for years mourning that Curio's outlines were just indented lists. Then I realized everything has notes, including the individual entries in an outline or the nodes in a mind map. That makes Curio's outlines a little like two pane layouts.

I've also found Curio visually tiring if I leave the Inspector panel open. I use it when I'm messing with a template or stencil and leave it closed, otherwise. The toolbar has everything you need for writing a Curio project. Better to have the interface less cluttered unless there's a specific reason to get to all the behind the scenes stuff.