Quick Capture

Quick Capture: three tabs (Task / Note / Project), chip pickers for the most common metadata, and a smart-syntax legend at the bottom.

Press n anywhere to open the Quick Capture modal. Three tabs — Task / Note / Project — with chip pickers for the most common metadata, plus a smart-syntax parser so you can pre-fill chips from inline notation in the title field.

The goal: zero-friction capture when you don't want to context-switch into a list view first.

The modal

Tab	What it captures
Task	Title, status, area, project, tags, context, energy. Lands in Inbox by default; pre-set a Status chip to skip the inbox.
Note	Title + area + project. Lands in your Notes inbox if you don't set an area or project; otherwise filed where you set it.
Project	Project name + outcome + area. Creates the project ready for tasks to be added.

Pressing n always opens to the Task tab unless you call it from a Note context (where it opens to Note).

Smart-syntax parser

You can type chip values inline in the Task tab's title field — the parser extracts them and clears them from the title before saving. Useful when your hands are already typing a fast capture and you don't want to break flow to click chips.

Syntax	Sets
#topic	Tag (creates the tag if new)
@phone / @home / @errands etc.	Context (only matches known contexts; otherwise treated as text)
!high / !medium / !low (or !med)	Energy level
*	Stars the task (adds to Today)
>project	Project (typeahead match against your existing projects by partial name)
~30min / ~1h / ~1.5hr	Estimated duration
[15m] / [30min] / [1h]	Same as ~ form (alt syntax)
3pm / 9 AM / 10:30am	Due time (sets due_date to today, due_time to the parsed value)

Combinable in a single capture:

Doctor visit 3pm tomorrow ~30min @phone *

→ Title "Doctor visit", due tomorrow at 3pm, estimated 30 min, context phone, starred.

The chip pickers

Below the title field, every chip is keyboard-navigable:

• Status — radio: inbox / active / waiting / someday
• Area — picker; defaults to the active Area of Focus
• Project — typeahead: type a few letters to match a project by partial name
• Tags — multi-select with create-new-on-Enter
• Context, Energy — same dropdowns as the detail pane

Picking a value auto-advances focus to the next chip, so you can keyboard your way through Title → Status → Project → Area → Save without touching the mouse.

Saving

Shortcut	Action
Enter	Save and close
Cmd+Enter / Ctrl+Enter	Save and keep the modal open for rapid-fire captures (clears title, keeps chip selections)
Esc	Cancel without saving

The "save and keep open" mode is the trick for end-of-day brain dump or weekly review processing — you can fire 20 quick captures into Inbox without re-opening the modal each time.

Voice capture vs Quick Capture

Shift+N opens Voice capture instead. Use voice for stream-of-consciousness brain dumps where you'd type slower than you talk; use Quick Capture for deliberate single-item entries with structured metadata.

Inbox capture bar (faster for inbox-only)

If all you want is a title-only inbox dump, the Inbox view has an always-visible capture input at the top. Press i to jump there, type, Enter to save, the input stays focused for the next one. No modal, no chips, just title-and-go. See Capture for the full GTD flow.

Keyboard shortcut

Shortcut	Action
n	Open Quick Capture (Task tab)
Shift+N	Open Voice capture
i	Jump to Inbox (where the always-visible inbox capture bar lives)

What Quick Capture doesn't do

• Doesn't set due dates from inline syntax other than time literals. tomorrow won't parse to a due_date. Use the chip picker for dates.
• Doesn't capture attachments. Drop a file in a note after creating it instead.
• Doesn't open in mobile gestures yet — on mobile, tap the capture FAB instead of using a keyboard shortcut.

Related

• Voice capture — Shift+N for the dictation alternative
• Inbox — where un-classified captures land
• Capture — the GTD-flow context for all capture paths