Project Nodal: Chat is a Line, Thought is a Network.

🎥 Watch the 15s Demo Video (MP4)

The "Chat Interface" is the biggest lie in modern computing.

Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. What do we see?
A linear feed. A text stream. A modernized teletype machine from the 1970s.

They force our brains into a single-threaded, chronological queue.
But that is not how we think.

Our minds are graphs. They jump from a coding bug, to a deployment strategy, to a marketing slogan, and back to the bug. It is concurrent, messy, and spatial.
Forcing networked brains into a linear interface is cognitive suffocation.

We built Project Nodal to break the timeline.

1. Space > Time

In standard AI, "Context" is just the previous 50 messages. If we change the subject, we pollute the context.
In Project Nodal, context is Spatial.

The Infinite Canvas: Drag the viewport. Zoom out to see the big picture. Zoom in to focus on a detail.
Zones: Create a "Zone" for backend logic. Create another for frontend design. Move them apart. Visually group our thoughts.

2. Objects > Streams

In Nodal, a conversation isn't a fleeting moment in a scroll; it's a Persistent Object (A Sticky Note).

Multi-Threaded: Have 5 conversations with the AI simultaneously.
Drag & Drop: Treat thoughts like physical objects. Move them. Resize them. Collapse them when they are "done" but keep them visible.

3. Fork Thoughts

This is our "Killer Feature".
In linear chat, if we want to explore a "What If" scenario, we often have to derail the whole conversation.
In Nodal, just click Fork.

Branching: Take a specific message, spin it off into a new Note, and explore that path without losing the original context.
Exploration: Go down the rabbit hole. If it's a dead end, just delete the note. The original conversation remains pure.

4. Synapses > Lists

Connections: Draw a line from a "Product Idea" note to a "Database Schema" note.
Build a Knowledge Graph, not a chat history. Make the relationships between our ideas explicit.

5. Our Minds are Private

Most "AI Workspaces" are just SaaS traps waiting to lock our data in.

Local-First: Nodal stores everything in the browser (IndexedDB). We don't have a database. We don't see the notes.
BYO-AI: Connect an OpenAI Key, or better yet, run Ollama locally. Our thoughts never leave our machines.

Project Nodal is not a "better chatbot".
It is a Thinking OS.

Stop scrolling. Start mapping.

⚠️ A Note on Web Deployment (Vercel/Netlify)

If you are viewing this demo online (HTTPS), you cannot connect to a local Ollama instance (HTTP) due to browser security policies (Mixed Content Blocking).

To use Local Ollama: Please clone this repo and run it locally:

git clone https://github.com/yibie/project-nodal.git
cd project-nodal
npm install
npm run dev

To use the Online Demo: Please use an OpenAI or DeepSeek API Key in the settings.

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