AI Now
Personal AI agent with full access to your knowledge, files, and connected services
AI Now is the place where you work directly with your saved knowledge. It runs on your machine and can use your memories, attached files, and enabled plugins as context for real tasks.
Instead of starting from a blank prompt every time, AI Now starts from what you already know. That makes it useful for research, analysis, presentations, and longer multi-step tasks that should build on your own history rather than generic model output.
Requirements
AI Now requires a configured Remote LLM.
Go to Settings → Remote LLM to set up, refer to Remote LLMs for details.
Client mode: If you're connected to another Nowledge Mem via Access Anywhere, AI Now automatically uses the remote server's LLM configuration — no local provider setup needed.
The First Useful Task
If you are opening AI Now for the first time, start with something grounded in your own knowledge:
What architecture decisions have I made about caching?
That is a better first task than a generic prompt because it lets you see the product model immediately:
- AI Now reads from your saved knowledge
- it can pull in files or enabled plugins when relevant
- it can turn the result back into updated knowledge if needed
Your first success state
You know AI Now is set up correctly when one grounded question about your own work gets a useful answer without you re-explaining everything from scratch.
What AI Now Can Do
| Category | What it does |
|---|---|
| Memory Search | Finds relevant memories with semantic understanding |
| Deep Research | Multi-source research combining your memories and web search |
| File Analysis | Analyzes Excel, CSV, Word, PDF files you provide |
| Data Visualization | Generates charts from your data |
| Presentations | Creates slides with live preview and PowerPoint export |
| Travel Planning | Creates interactive day-by-day itineraries |
| Integrations | Connects to Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, and custom MCP plugins |
Getting Started
Configure Remote LLM
Go to Settings → Remote LLM and add your API key.
Open AI Now
Click the AI Now tab in the sidebar, or press Cmd/Ctrl + 5.
Start a Grounded Task
Start with a task that matches the context you have already given Mem:
What architecture decisions have I made about caching?
When relevant, it pulls from your memories, searches the web, and uses any connected notes or enabled plugins you have configured.
You can also drop files or folders for analysis, request reports based on your recent work, or run a deep study on any topic.
As it works, AI Now can also create or update memories when that is useful.
Mention memories in your chat
Use @ to search and reference specific memories in your conversation.
Deep Research
For comprehensive research, AI Now runs parallel sub-tasks across multiple sources and synthesizes the results.
Enable Deep Research
Click the Research toggle in the AI Now chat interface.
How It Works
Ask a research question:
Research the current state of quantum error correction
AI Now will:
- Search your memories for existing knowledge on the topic
- Search the web from multiple angles
- Synthesize findings into a single answer
- Cite sources with reliability indicators
Optional Skills
Skills are specialized capabilities you enable for specific tasks.
| Skill | What it enables |
|---|---|
| Documents | Excel/CSV analysis, chart generation, file operations |
| Presentation Creator | Slide generation with live preview and export |
| Travel Planner | Interactive itinerary creation |
| Browse Now | Real-browser automation for authenticated and interactive web tasks |
Enable skills in AI Now → Plugins → Skills.
File Analysis
Attach files or folders to your conversation for analysis.
Documents Skills
Toggle the Documents SKILL in AI Now Plugins to enable.
Supported Files
| Type | Extensions | What AI Now Does |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheets | .xlsx, .xls, .csv | Analyzes data, finds patterns, generates charts |
| Documents | .docx, .doc, .pdf | Summarizes, extracts key points, answers questions |
| Code | .py, .js, .ts, etc. | Reviews, explains, suggests improvements |
Example
- Attach
sales_q4.xlsx - Ask: "What are the top 3 trends in this data?"
- AI Now analyzes and generates visualizations
Whole folders work too.
Presentations
Presentation Skills
Toggle the Presentation SKILL in AI Now Plugins to enable.
Create a presentation based on our above study and research, include some charts or diagrams to support the insights
AI Now generates slides with structure, charts, and insights from your conversation.
Refine with follow-up requests ("Make the third slide more visual", "Add a slide about customer segments"), or click Edit to edit directly.
Export as PowerPoint with the PPTX button.
Travel Planning
Travel Planner Skills
Toggle the Travel Planner SKILL in AI Now Plugins to enable.
Plan a 5-day trip to Tokyo focusing on food and culture
AI Now generates an interactive day-by-day itinerary using your recent memories and web research as context.
Browse Now
Browse Now Skill
Toggle the Browse Now skill in AI Now → Plugins → Skills to let AI Now use your real browser for authenticated or dynamic pages.
Turn this on when a task needs your actual browser session, not a generic fetch. Typical cases:
- logged-in websites
- clicking, typing, scrolling, or multi-step flows
- screenshots or rendered-page extraction
- dynamic pages where ordinary fetches miss the real UI state
This capability is local-only. The browser bridge runs on the same machine as AI Now and is not exposed through Access Anywhere.
Plugins
Extend AI Now with connections to your other apps.
Built-in Plugins
Obsidian
- Go to AI Now → Plugins
- Enable Obsidian
- Set your vault path
AI Now can now search and read your Obsidian notes alongside your memories.
Notion
- Go to AI Now → Plugins
- Enable Notion
- Click Connect and authorize in the browser
AI Now can search your Notion pages and databases.
Apple Notes (macOS)
- Go to AI Now → Plugins
- Enable Apple Notes
- Grant permission when prompted
AI Now can search and read your Apple Notes. No vault path or sync setup needed — it reads directly from the system database. Read-only.
Custom MCP Plugins
AI Now supports Model Context Protocol for custom integrations.
Go to AI Now → Plugins → Custom Plugins
Click Add MCP Server
Configure the server (stdio command or HTTP endpoint)
Click Test Connection to verify
Enable the plugin
MCP plugins with OAuth (GitHub, Slack, etc.) are detected automatically and prompt for authorization.
Session Management
Conversations are saved automatically. Click a previous session to resume, or create new sessions for parallel workstreams. Each session maintains its own history.
Auto-Approve Mode
Enable Auto to skip confirmation prompts for file operations and other actions.
Use with caution
Auto-Approve grants AI Now permission to act without asking. Only enable for trusted workflows.
Using AI Now from Another Device
If your main Nowledge Mem runs on an always-on machine (a Mac Mini, a server, your office desktop), you can use AI Now from any other device that connects via Access Anywhere.
This is not a separate second knowledge base. You are using the same Mem from another client. If you want the broader model, read Sync Across Devices.
How it works:
- Open the desktop app on the second device and connect to your main Mem via Settings → Access Anywhere
- AI Now runs locally on the device you're sitting at
- It automatically picks up the LLM provider configured on the remote server — no extra setup
- Your memories, threads, and library are accessed from the remote server via the secure tunnel
- The title bar shows Local AI to indicate the AI agent runs on your device, while your data lives on the remote server
What about the web browser?
AI Now is not available in the browser at /app. It requires the desktop app because the AI agent runs locally. From a browser, you can search, browse memories, and explore the graph — but for AI Now, open the desktop app.
Plugins in client mode
Plugins like Obsidian and Apple Notes read from the local machine. When using AI Now remotely, these plugins access files on the device you're currently on, not the remote server.
Tips
- Be specific: "What did we decide about the database migration last month?" beats "database stuff"
- Attach context: drop files or mention notes with
@for better results - Use sessions: separate sessions for different projects or topics
Next Steps
- Access Anywhere: Use Mem from any device — the foundation for multi-device workflows
- Sync Across Devices: Understand the single-Mem, multi-client sync model
- Remote LLM Setup: Configure your AI provider
- Integrations: Connect your AI tools and capture paths
- Background Intelligence: How your knowledge grows on its own