Molecule Notes vs Tana

Write first. Let your links make the structure.

An outline journal where every note on a journal page is dated, every [[link]] gathers its mentions on one page, and a graph view shows the connections you've made. With the people you work with, live.

Start writing

What Tana's docs say about AI chat

Note: You cannot chat with your whole graph yet, this requires a different approach entirely.

From Tana Outliner docs: AI chat

This page compares Molecule Notes with Tana Outliner, the outliner at outliner.tana.inc. The name Tana now also belongs to a separate, meeting-centered product at tana.inc, which this page isn't about.

Tana Outliner has more AI than most notes apps, and some of it is better than ours. Its docs are candid about where chat stops: you bring a note into the conversation by typing @ and picking it, and the whole graph isn't available yet.

In Molecule Notes you call an agent by name on a line, and it finds its own context. It searches your pages, reads the ones that matter, follows their links and searches the web, then writes what it found under your line. The rest of the page is still yours.

Nothing needs filing, either. People give up on notes when deciding where each one goes takes longer than writing it. On a journal page every note is dated. Link a person, a book or a project with [[double brackets]], and every mention of it gathers on its page under Linked mentions.

No graph view.
Tana Outliner's views are list, table, cards, tabs and calendar. A graph view has been requested on its ideas board since 2023, with 288 votes.
You choose what the AI reads.
"Insert a reference in the chat (by typing @ and selecting a node) to talk about its contents with AI."

Molecule Notes and Tana, side by side
Feature	Molecule Notes	Tana
Graph of linked pages	Yes: A graph view of the links you make.	No: Views are list, table, cards, tabs and calendar.
AI that finds its own context	Yes: An agent you name on a line searches and reads your pages.	Partly: Chat reads the nodes you @ mention, not the whole graph.
Typed fields	No: Pages of bullets and links. No fields.	Yes: Supertags, with nine field types.
Voice to a structured note	No: None.	Yes: Voice memos fill in fields, in 91 languages.
Writing together	Yes: Live cursors, comments, and a read-only role.	Not documented: Shared workspaces. Live co-editing isn't documented.
Public API	No: No REST API. An MCP server reads and writes.	Partly: The Input API only writes, on the Pro plan.
Export	Partly: Any page as Markdown, one page at a time.	Yes: Markdown or JSON, on every plan.
Offline	No: Needs a connection to read and write notes.	Partly: Most features work on desktop. Shared workspaces go read-only.
Phone app	Partly: No native app. The web app installs to a home screen.	Yes: Mobile apps, with voice memos.
Desktop app	No: None. It runs in a browser.	Yes: Including Linux, as .deb and .rpm packages.

Two products called Tana

Tana has split in two. Tana Outliner, at outliner.tana.inc, is the notes tool this page compares. The new Tana, at tana.inc, is built around meetings, with real-time collaboration for a whole team.

Tana has been clear about the outliner's future: "Tana Outliner is staying. Nothing is being taken away." That's worth taking at its word.

The announcement landed unevenly. On the Outliner Software forum, some longtime users worried about what it meant for the outliner, and others came away from Tana's AMA reassured that nobody would be pushed onto the new product.

If what you need is other people in your notes, that's what Molecule Notes is for. You invite them to a workspace and write on the same page, with each other's cursors, and comments sit on the bullet they're about. Each person has a role, and a viewer can read without editing.

Structure you don't design first

Supertags are the most capable structured-notes model in this category. A supertag gives a node its fields, and a well-built set of them turns an outline into a database. It's also a system you design before it pays off.

Molecule Notes starts somewhere else. You open today's page and write, a line at a time, and every note is dated. There's no schema to set up before you're allowed to take a note.

When something matters, link it. Type [[ and name a person, a book or a project, and every mention of it gathers on that page under Linked mentions. The graph view shows the connections you've made.

What you give up is fields. Molecule Notes has no supertags and no typed properties. If your notes are a database you query, Tana Outliner does that and we don't.

Getting your notes out of Molecule Notes

Any page exports as Markdown, with Copy as Markdown or Export as Markdown. It's one page at a time; there's no button that exports a whole workspace.

To take everything at once, connect an AI assistant to Molecule's MCP server. It can list your pages and read each one as Markdown, with its bullets and their nesting intact.

Bringing Tana Outliner in

Export from Tana Outliner first. Markdown is the format to take, and every plan has it.

There's no import screen. Import goes through the MCP server: connect an AI assistant to Molecule Notes and point it at the export. It writes pages in bulk, and nesting becomes bullets. Links in [[double brackets]] point at the page of that name, so Linked mentions build as the pages arrive. A page titled with a calendar day, like 2026-09-13, lands on that day's journal page.

Molecule Notes has no typed fields, so supertags and their fields won't arrive as structure. You keep the words; the schema stays behind.

Running the same import twice appends everything a second time rather than replacing it, so bring your notes in once.

Sources

Comparison verified September 2026.