Shotmo (莳芽记) is a note-taking app. Its tagline is: plant a fragment, let time grow it. You jot a fragment down, and then the note grows up on its own: as you keep editing it, tagging it and linking it to related notes, it is promoted automatically from Seed to Sprout and then to Evergreen, ending up as reusable knowledge.
Core capabilities: frictionless capture · AI auto-tagging · note linking with automatic series · AI Insight · Daily Review · semantic search · contribution heatmap · sharing with revoke · Markdown / PDF export. Note bodies and images are stored with AES-256-GCM encryption.
What Shotmo is How to use it Data, security and privacy Account Membership and pricing Use cases
Shotmo (莳芽记) is a note-taking app. Its tagline is: plant a fragment, let time grow it. The point is not to write documents, but to jot one fragment down and let that note grow up. A fragment starts as a Seed; as you keep editing it, tagging it and linking it to related notes, it is automatically promoted to Sprout and then to Evergreen, ending up as reusable knowledge.
Beyond capture it offers AI auto-tagging, note linking with automatic series, AI Insight, Daily Review, search, sharing and export. It runs in a mobile browser as a web app.
Three differences. First, notes have growth levels: Seed, Sprout, Evergreen, promoted automatically based on edit count, inbound links, manual tag count and content growth rate, so you never have to file or classify anything by hand. Second, AI does the organising: tags are extracted automatically after you save, and writing three or more notes on the same topic automatically merges them into a Series, with no manual folders. Third, the form is lighter: one input box and one note stream, not a block editor, not a database, and no folder tree to maintain.
In short, Shotmo focuses on letting captured fragments grow into something reusable.
Three kinds of people: those who have plenty of ideas but no time to organise, who just capture and let tagging and levelling happen automatically; readers who take excerpts and annotations, whose notes on the same book automatically form a series for review; people who want to keep a journal, where a single sentence counts and the heatmap plus streak gives positive feedback.
No. Shotmo is built for frictionless capture: the app opens on an input box, you can hit Capture halfway through a thought, and nothing like a title, category or folder is required. Tags are extracted from your text by AI and note levels are promoted automatically, so there is no organising work to do. The real rhythm is: capture one line on the way somewhere, and when you come back it is already sorted by topic and tag.
The interface supports Chinese and English with a one-tap switch. The Chinese version of this FAQ is also available.
The home page is an input box: write your content, tap the camera icon to attach images if you want (several images per note are allowed), then tap Capture. There are no required fields such as title, category or folder. The note appears in the note stream below, and tags are extracted from it at the same time.
They are the three growth levels of a note, expressing how far a note has been nurtured. Seed: a freshly captured fragment, still raw. Sprout: a note that has been worked on, revisited, or connected to other notes. Evergreen: mature knowledge, stable, complete and reusable. The home page can filter by level (All, Seed, Sprout, Evergreen) so you can see which layer your accumulation has reached.
Yes, fully automatically and with no manual action: meeting any single condition triggers the promotion.
Seed to Sprout: edited at least 3 times ／ linked by at least 3 other notes ／ at least 3 manual tags ／ edited at least once with content growth of 30% or more.
Sprout to Evergreen: edited at least 5 times ／ linked by at least 5 notes ／ at least 5 manual tags ／ edited at least 3 times with content growth of 50% or more.
A toast appears on promotion, and the first promotion also shows a magic moment animation.
After you save a note, the system extracts tags from the note body automatically, so you do not have to pick categories by hand. Tags follow the content: if you rewrite the body, tags are regenerated from the current text instead of sticking to old ones. You can also add or remove tags manually, and manual tags count towards the level-up conditions.
Type @ inside a note to open the note picker, search and select another note, and a two-way link is created; a Linked counter appears on the note card. Inbound link count counts towards the level-up conditions, and interlinked notes are merged into a Series. If a note already belongs to a series, opening the linked area shows the whole timeline.
Write three or more related notes in a row on the same topic and the system automatically merges them into a series, with no manual folder or identical tags required. The Series library lists every detected series and each one expands into a timeline. In AI Insight, notes from the same series collapse into a single card, and selecting it includes the whole group in the analysis.
AI Insight analyses notes that you have already linked together, ideally 2 to 6 of them, to uncover hidden thinking patterns and deeper meaning, and it names which source notes each conclusion came from.
Typical uses: link several excerpts from the same book and let it surface the shared argument, or link successive retrospectives of one project to see whether the same blocker keeps recurring. It is a membership feature: 10 runs per day on Basic, 30 per day on Pro, and past insights are kept for review.
Daily Review brings back yesterday's fragments one at a time so you can revisit them, edit or extend anything that sparks something, then tap Next. It targets the most common failure mode of capture tools, which is never reading your own notes again. The habit is light: a minute or two a day going through yesterday's entries, giving pure fragments a chance to form new connections.
Search matches both note bodies and tags by default, highlights the matched words inside the note, and shows how many matches a note has. Members can also turn on AI semantic search, which searches by meaning rather than exact wording: searching for how to manage time can still surface a note you wrote saying you did not get through the plan again today.
Yes. The home page shows stats: number of notes, number of tags and days recorded, along with a contribution heatmap for the last 8 weeks, where a darker cell means more notes that day. Cumulative milestones at 10, 50 and 100 notes also fire a small celebration, as a nudge for long-term consistency.
Yes. The editor supports bold, underline, italic, quote, text colour and background colour, as well as bulleted and numbered lists. Formatting happens in edit mode, and the note stream renders the formatting after saving.
By default only you can see it. Your notes never appear in any public list, public profile or search page. Only when you deliberately generate a share link for a specific note can anyone holding that link read that note, and only that one note: none of your other notes, account details or order information. You can revoke a share at any time in the app.
Note bodies and images are first encrypted with AES-256-GCM, then stored as a whole in an encrypted object storage bucket. The server keeps no plaintext, only ciphertext. Login passwords are stored as salted hashes so plaintext passwords are never known to us, and all traffic uses HTTPS / TLS. See the Privacy Policy for details.
No. Once revoked, the original share link stops working immediately and anyone opening it sees that the share does not exist or has expired. Share History shows the status of each share, active or revoked, together with scan counts, and lets you revoke from there. Note that anything already opened or screenshotted before the revocation took effect cannot be taken back.
Your data is stored on servers located in the People's Republic of China. We use encrypted transmission, access control and regular backups, but no internet transmission or storage method is absolutely secure.
Yes. Export supports Markdown and PDF, and you can filter by time range, tag and note level before exporting, so what you get is exactly the set you were looking at. Export is a membership feature and is available from Basic.
Yes. Every note has version history, synced to the cloud and kept for the most recent 30 days, with older versions pruned automatically. The free plan can view the latest single version; Basic members can view the last 10 days. Restoring a version does not lose your current one: it becomes the newest entry in the history list.
To delete one note, tap delete on the note and confirm; deletion cannot be undone. To close your account, open Settings while signed in; closing requires verifying your login password, after which content is retained for audit purposes under the User Agreement and membership benefits end without a refund. For help, contact us at postmaster@shotmo.cn.
Yes. The home page offers Browse as guest, so you can start writing notes without registering and get a feel for capture. Guest mode has a limit on how many notes you can write; when you reach it you can sign in to keep those notes in your account and continue writing.
Sign up with email: enter a nickname and email, tap Send code to receive an email verification code, and fill in the image captcha; registration then completes and logs you in automatically. Log in with email and password. You can also log in or bind with an Alipay account. Nicknames may be at most 20 characters and cannot contain angle brackets, quotes or backticks.
The free plan already covers the core experience: quick capture, AI auto-tagging, linking and series, search, the heatmap and stats, sharing and revoking. Some quotas are simply lower, for example free users can only view the latest version in version history. Membership raises those quotas and unlocks member-only capabilities.
| Feature | Basic | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Price | 9.9 CNY / mo or 99 CNY / yr | 19.9 CNY / mo or 199 CNY / yr |
| Storage | 5 GB | 10 GB |
| AI Insight quota | 10 per day | 30 per day |
| Version history | Last 10 days unlocked | Full 30 days |
| Auto-tag limit | Up to 10 | Up to 30 |
| Manual tag limit | Up to 10 | Up to 30 |
| Images per note | Up to 10 | Up to 30 |
| Max image size | Up to 10 MB | Up to 30 MB |
| Export (Markdown / PDF) | Yes | Yes |
| AI semantic search | Yes | Yes |
| Member badge | Yes | Yes |
Exact entitlements are as displayed in the app; if tiers, benefits or prices change we will announce it in advance, and active subscriptions continue under their original terms.
Basic: 9.9 CNY / month, or 99 CNY / year. Pro: 19.9 CNY / month, or 199 CNY / year. Payment is a one-off purchase via Alipay and does not auto-renew; when the term ends the benefits end automatically and you can subscribe again manually at any time. See the Subscription Agreement.
Yes. Renewing the same tier adds to your existing expiry date. Upgrading from Basic to Pro refunds the unused part of the current tier, calculated as amount paid × remaining days ÷ window length, and then activates Pro, so you do not have to wait for Basic to expire. Membership is a virtual product and is generally non-refundable once activated; for technical issues such as duplicate charges or a payment that failed but was still charged, contact us and we will verify and refund.
Treat writing as collecting rather than producing. Step one: capture every idea the moment it arrives, one sentence is fine, it starts as a Seed. Step two: whenever a related thought comes up, go back and extend the original note, or create a new one and link it to the original. Step three: once there are three or more notes on the topic they automatically form a series; read the series timeline once and you will see the scattered thoughts already arranged into structure. Step four: when you need to deliver, export Markdown to carry the material into your editor.
Capture excerpts as you go rather than trying to record everything at once: when a passage strikes you, copy a line or write one sentence of reaction and save it, and AI extracts tags such as themes and keywords. Once you have three or more excerpts from the same book they automatically merge into a series, and opening that timeline afterwards is the complete reading trail for the book. To go further, link several notes across different books on the same theme and run AI Insight to find the shared argument, with the source notes named in the answer.
Lower the bar to a single sentence. The diary template starts a note quickly; write one thing that happened, one feeling, or one line you want to say, and there is no word count to reach. Two things keep it going: the 8-week contribution heatmap makes empty days visible so you do not want to break the streak, and Daily Review walks you back through yesterday, which shows you are genuinely accumulating. To keep the original voice without losing readability, add an edit or a link afterwards and let it grow from Seed to Sprout.