Inkpad Beta

Offline Windows notes, drawings and pictures — with a built-in AI agent interface. Written in Rust and Slint. No account, cloud service or Electron required.

Inkpad includes a desktop app (Inkpad.exe) and an MCP server (inkpad-agent.exe) so compatible AI agents can work with your saved notes without opening the app.

What your AI agent can do

• Create notes and list, read, search, rename, update, append to, pin, select or delete them.
• Search and read together — return matching note text in one request instead of searching and opening each result separately.
• Edit multiple notes at once — perform up to 32 validated create, append, rename, update or pin operations in one atomic batch.
• Write and format text — insert or replace selected Unicode text; apply or clear bold, colours, font sizes and fonts; copy/paste styled text fragments; format ranges in batches.
• Add pictures — import approved PNG/JPEG/GIF/WebP files or supplied image data, position pictures within a note, resize, reorder, add captions, view or remove them.
• Read and export pictures — inspect an attached image or save it as PNG with your approval.
• Draw on notes — add freehand strokes, change brush properties, erase, inspect drawings and export a drawing as PNG.
• Create editable artwork — make vector shapes, change fills/gradients and strokes, move/resize/rotate/flip objects, reorder or group them, and work with layers, visibility and locks.
• Inspect and edit drawings — select objects by position, preview the canvas, and undo/redo supported drawing edits within the current MCP session.
• Export notes — save plain text or complete self-contained HTML with formatting, drawings and embedded pictures.
• Manage preferences — inspect workspace details, switch the app theme and expand/collapse the sidebar.

Inkpad exposes 61 MCP tools, including a 512-shape multi-layer scene tool, 64-shape batches and fast stroke batches. Destructive changes and access to local image files require explicit user approval. Full tool arguments, limitations and examples are in AGENTS.md, with an AI drawing guide for more polished artwork.

Desktop features

• Notes with rich-text styling, inline pictures, captions and a drawing canvas
• Editable vector objects and freehand drawing
• Search, pinned notes, keyboard shortcuts, light/dark/system themes
• Automatic local saving, backup recovery and cross-process conflict protection

Download and run

Download Inkpad-Beta-Windows-x64.zip. One package contains both the desktop app (Inkpad.exe) and the AI MCP server (inkpad-agent.exe).

Extract the ZIP and run Inkpad.exe. To connect an AI agent, register the included inkpad-agent.exe as a local stdio server with argument mcp; restart or reconnect the AI client. The Windows Beta executables are unsigned and may trigger a SmartScreen warning.

If Windows reports a missing VCRUNTIME140.dll, install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64).

For clients using an mcpServers JSON configuration (such as Claude Desktop), replace the example path with the actual location of the downloaded executable:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "inkpad": {
      "command": "C:\\path\\to\\Inkpad\\inkpad-agent.exe",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Chat On Steroids: add a local MCP server with Transport: stdio, Command: full path to inkpad-agent.exe, Arguments: mcp. No URL, API key or cloud server is required. The agent and desktop use the same %LOCALAPPDATA%\Inkpad notes automatically, even when the desktop is closed. Both programs must run on the PC holding the notes; set INKPAD_DATA_DIR on both for a different storage folder. More clients and details: AGENTS.md.

Build from source

Requires Rust (MSVC), MSVC Build Tools and the Windows SDK.

cargo test
cargo build --release --bins

Output: target\release\Inkpad.exe (desktop) and target\release\inkpad-agent.exe (MCP).

Beta limitations: Windows-only; notes are local, not cloud-synced. Drawing canvas size is fixed, and some rich-text presentation remains a separate preview rather than fully WYSIWYG. Back up the entire %LOCALAPPDATA%\Inkpad folder (including workspace.json, workspace.json.bak and media\) before changing devices or storage.