For researchers
The Mind Map That Stays on Your Laptop.
You can't see the gaps in your literature until you can see the shape. Dumbnote maps sources, themes, and arguments as a spatial cluster — on a single HTML file that lives on your disk, not in a cloud you don't control.
Why this matters
Drowning in literature is a shape problem, not a storage problem.
Inger Mewburn — the Thesis Whisperer, who's supervised more PhDs than most of us will read papers — writes about "literature review anxiety" and "the scattergun approach" that ends with the candidate "drowning" in their own sources. Reference managers don't solve that. A list of 200 papers in Zotero will never show you the gap your thesis sits in. You can only see the gap when you can see the shape.
Dumbnote is the spatial layer reference managers were never meant to be. Map sources as nodes, themes as branches, arguments as cross-cluster connections. Switch to Graph mode when the connections sprawl and don't fit a tree. Park unplaced sources as float nodes — the "I haven't decided where this one belongs yet" pile — without forcing yourself to slot them prematurely.
And it's all offline mind mapping. A single HTML file in your browser. Your literature map never leaves your disk. No cloud account holds your draft, no third-party server sees your sources, no terms of service quietly grants someone else a license to your unpublished work.
How it stacks up
How Dumbnote compares vs the usual research stack
| Capability | Dumbnote | Zotero | Obsidian | Notion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spatial layout (see the gaps) | ✓ | × | partial | × |
| Works offline (no cloud) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | × |
| No account / no signup | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | × |
| IRB-compatible (no third-party server) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | × |
| Graph mode + Mindmap in one tool | ✓ | × | partial | × |
| Zero setup (no plugins to configure) | ✓ | partial | × | ✓ |
For your work
For IRB-Restricted Data, Unpublished Findings, and Drafts No Platform Should Own.
If you're working with interview transcripts, IRB-restricted data, or unpublished findings, the question of where your research lives matters. Researchers in the Netherlands (TU Delft, surveyed by Delta) put it plainly: "Even if the server is next to my front door, US law still grants access." For anyone whose consent forms specified institutional storage, the default cloud tools — Notion, Google Docs, Mendeley, Roam — are quietly out of compliance.
Dumbnote runs entirely in your browser, with the document stored locally. No telemetry on document contents, no sync daemon, no signup. Your IRB-restricted interview transcript stays on your laptop. The file is yours; the format is HTML; the export is plain Markdown. Cross-jurisdictional questions about who can compel your data don't apply when nobody else has it.
How it works
How researchers use Dumbnote
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Drop your sources as nodes
Author + year as the label. Tag the page number where the relevant quote lives. Skip the bibliographic-completeness anxiety — you can always fill that in later in Zotero.
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Group into themes — but let some sources float
Drag sources into thematic branches as you read. The ones you haven't placed yet sit as float nodes off the tree — a parking lot for "I'm not sure where this fits." Mewburn calls premature filing one of the avoidable PhD-anxiety patterns; float nodes let you defer the decision without losing the source.
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Paste the relevant quote inside the node
Expand any source node into a rich card. Paste the quote, the page number, your own marginal note. The whole context lives with the source — no flipping back to the PDF when you sit down to write.
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Switch to Graph mode to find the clusters
When the literature stops fitting a tree — sources that cite each other across themes, arguments that loop back — open the same document as a Graph. The spatial layout surfaces clusters and contradictions that a hierarchical view hides.
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Export to Markdown when you draft
Your map becomes the lit-review section's scaffolding. Markdown drops cleanly into Word, Pages, LaTeX, or your reference-manager workflow. The source structure travels with you — no copy-paste fragility.
Common questions
Questions visitors ask before they try it.
Is this an alternative to Zotero?
No — it's a layer beside it. Zotero stores the PDFs and handles the citation formatting; Dumbnote is the spatial thinking surface where you map how the sources relate. Many researchers use both — Zotero for bibliographic management, Dumbnote for the synthesis. (Note: Zotero has documented failure modes at thesis-scale; if your 70k-word document is corrupting footnotes weeks before defense, that's a Zotero issue, not a workflow issue.)
Can I use this for IRB-restricted research?
Yes — and it's one of the few mind-mapping tools where you can. Dumbnote runs entirely in your browser; the document is stored locally on your device; nothing is transmitted to a third-party server. For IRB protocols that specify institutional storage and prohibit cloud processing of participant data, this matches the constraint.
What happens if I close my browser?
Your map auto-saves to your browser's local storage. Reopen the same browser tomorrow, next month, after a system update — it's still there. For belt-and-suspenders backup, export to Markdown or save the standalone HTML file to your institutional drive.
How is this different from Obsidian for research?
Obsidian works if you spend weeks tuning Zotero integration, Dataview, Templater, and citation plugins. Researchers in the Obsidian forum openly describe building "the vault" — meaning a configuration project — rather than reading papers. The graph view is structural, not spatial: you can't place a node where it belongs relative to the others. Dumbnote is the inverse: zero setup, no plugins, and Graph mode lets you place nodes wherever you want them.
Does it work with a reference manager?
It doesn't integrate directly. The workflow we see in practice: tag each Dumbnote source node with the Zotero/Mendeley citation key (e.g. "@bjork2011"), and on draft-out, run a search-and-replace in your Markdown to convert to your reference manager's format. Lightweight and version-control-friendly.
Is it free?
Yes. No per-seat fee, no premium tier, no academic discount needed. Free is the default.