Anatomy of your morning letter

Note That Down has one output: a single email each morning. Here is what is in it, top to bottom, and the settings that shape it.

When it arrives

By default the letter arrives at 6 a.m. in your time zone. You can move it in the app, under Settings, to any three-hour mark, from midnight to 9 p.m. It holds everything you saved the day before. If you saved nothing, there is no letter. We never send an empty one.

The masthead

At the top: the date, how many things you saved, and roughly how long it would take to read all of them in full. That last number is there to make a point. The letter exists so you do not have to.

The editor's note

Two or three sentences before the entries. If two of your saves disagree with each other, or one should be read first, the note says so. If nothing connects, it says that in one line instead of inventing a theme.

The entries

Entries are grouped by verdict: Must-read first, then Worth reading, then Skim. Each entry has the title, the read time or runtime, and the publication or author. Then comes a one-sentence thesis, three points, and sometimes a single notable line, like a number or an image that stayed with us. It ends with the verdict, a short reason, and a link to the original.

Couldn't write a summary

At the bottom are the things we could not summarize: articles behind a paywall, videos without captions, and pages we could not fetch. They keep their titles and links. Nothing you save disappears.

Saves after the letter goes out

Anything you save after today's letter is sent waits for tomorrow's. The day ends when the letter goes out, not at midnight.

The archive

Every letter is kept in the app, under Archive, with the same layout as the email. If a letter gets buried in your inbox, it is still there.