AIOS Basics — The Daily Note

Updated September 2026

🎯 Purpose

Explain the one rule the whole product follows, so everything else makes sense without being memorised.

On the free plan everything in this SOP works exactly as described. None of it calls an AI model.

📌 Prerequisites

You are signed in and looking at the dashboard.

🔑 The one rule

Your note is the truth. Everything else is a view of it.

The plan, the calendar, the brief and the task list are all derived from what is written in your notes. If they ever disagree with your note, the note wins.

Three things follow from that, and they are the whole product:

You never learn a syntax. Write the way you would on paper. AIOS reads it.
AIOS may move your words, never delete them. Finishing something moves the line to Work Completed. Deleting is yours alone.
Every automatic action is written down in the note's System Log, at the bottom. If AIOS did something, that is where it says so — each line stamped with the time it happened, written the way you read a clock (- [6:42 PM] added to next_steps: …). Lines written before v5.15 carry a 24-hour stamp and are left exactly as they are; nothing rewrites a note you already have.

🪜 Steps — make a line become a real task

Open today's Daily Note (the notebook panel opens on it).
Under 🎯 Tasks & Next Steps, type a line: - book the dentist
Click SAVE, or just click outside the editor — it autosaves.
Look at the Recommended Plan panel. Your line is in it.

🪜 Steps — make a line become a real event

Under 📆 Schedule, type a line with a time in it, anywhere in the line: - team standup at 9:30am
Save.
It is now in your plan, your Daily Brief and your calendar.

A time is what makes a Schedule line an event. 9:30am, 09:30, 3:00-3:30pm and 1130am all work. A bare number does not — empty 5 buckets is not 5am, on purpose.

Some Schedule lines arrive on their own, and that is deliberate. Anything on today's calendar — an event you booked weeks ago, and any routine that falls today — is written into this section when you open the day, so the section is the whole of your day rather than only the parts you typed here. The System Log names each one it added. A routine's line is a copy for you to read: deleting it does not end the routine (delete its line from your Core SOP note for that), and it never becomes a second, separate event.

🪜 Steps — finish something

Tick it in the Recommended Plan, or
type finished book the dentist in the prompt box, or
open the calendar and press ✓ on the event.

All three do the same thing, because they are the same code. The line moves to 🏗️ Work Completed with a ✓ and a note saying AIOS moved it.

🔍 How to verify

The line you typed appears in the Recommended Plan within a second or two.
After finishing it, it is under Work Completed in the note AND gone from the plan.
The 🤖 System Log at the bottom of the note has a line describing what happened.

🚨 When it does not work

What you see	What it means	What to do
The line is in the note but not in the plan	It is under a heading the plan does not read (Work Completed, Notes & Observations, Links)	Move it under Focus, Tasks & Next Steps, or Schedule
A Schedule line never becomes an event	AIOS could not find exactly one time in it, or found two	Read the System Log — it names the line and the reason
Nothing saves	The note changed on another device	See Your Phone, Your Settings → When two devices disagree

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