Feature Roundup

Curio has scores of features that you can use to maximize your productivity!

Here’s a central index of all of Curio’s key features with links to details elsewhere in the documentation, separated by our Standard and Professional editions.

Curio Standard

Kickstart your productivity with an amazing collection of features and functionality with projects unlimited in size.

Notebook Environment

Collections

  • Compositions provide flexible, dynamically-sized arrangements of contained figures including text, images, files, plus lists, mind maps, tables, and more. Tabloid compositions create newspaper-style layouts with flexible rows and columns, while matrix compositions provide structured, simplified grids.
  • Mind mapping with left, right, top-down, right-down, tree, and org chart arrangements; branch boundary shading; relationship lines; date calculations.
  • Lists from simple to-do’s to complex hierarchical lists, numbered or bulleted, checkboxes, level styles, date calculations.
  • Albums of photos or documents, such as PDFs, with optional captions.
  • Index cards for organizing your notes.
  • Tables with headers, footers, numeric formatting, and column sorting.
  • Pinboards for freeform collections of text and images.
  • Stacks for task tracking and layout grouping.
  • Kanban boards that automatically generate sorted stacks from groupings like priority, rating, tag sets, and dates for Trello-style task organization.
  • Generate color palettes for list and mind map branches using OKLCH-based hue spreading from a base color.
  • Table of Contents list or mind map.
  • Focus mode to help you concentrate on specific figures, branches, or connected idea graph figures.

Meta

Multimedia and PDFs

Flowcharting

Research

  • Sleuth window and Sleuth sidebar shelf for integrated Internet searching via popular research and image sites like Google, Wikipedia, and more.
  • AI Services including ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, Perplexity, Poe, Groq, Grok, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, and local LLM chat servers are also available from within Sleuth.

Automation

  • Curio App Intents bring Curio into Apple Shortcuts with native actions for opening projects, finding items, reading the current selection, navigating, exporting, and importing into the current idea space.
  • Curio Query widget for macOS Desktop and Notification Center are available to keep project query results visible at a glance.

Import / Export

Curio Professional

Curio’s most advanced features for power-users and productivity gurus.

  • Curio CLI command line tool for Terminal users, scripts, and LLM workflows, with a built-in MCP server for AI clients like Claude Desktop. Give your favorite LLM access to all your Curio data to rewrite text, fine-tune images, perform queries & analysis, import and export data, set meta values, and much more.
  • Smart Kanban boards backed by search queries that dynamically generate stacks filled with synced figure instances from across a project.
  • Table formulas and markdown table formulas with Excel-like structured references, SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, and more.
  • Mermaid figures, Mermaid in markdown code blocks, and Mermaid Organizer documents for advanced diagramming.
  • Markdown language code blocks with syntax coloring.
  • Synced figure instances where copies of figures across a project share content and meta (transclusion) across an entire project, plus synced collection instances for lists, mind maps, and stacks.
  • Synced files where figures can sync the contents of text figures and list, mind map, stack, and table collection figures to external local or cloud-hosted files, either bidirectionally, export only, or import only.
  • File-backed text figures display the content of embedded or aliased rich text or markdown files, located anywhere on disk, as editable text figures.
  • Figure layers allow for more flexible layouts and arrangements.
  • Figure references with a dedicated References panel in the Meta inspector, supporting custom types like Agree and Evidence between figures, idea spaces, and web locations.
  • Status shelf for easy cross-project task tracking at a glance.
  • Curio Status widget mirrors the Curio Pro Status shelf on the macOS Desktop and in Notification Center for cross-project task tracking at a glance.
  • Query-based collections allow you to create list, mind map, or stack collections that contain the dynamic results of a query, like due<2w or #active.
  • Master figure styles and stencils, master idea space styles and templates, and master markdown styles for dynamic updates throughout a project.
  • Presentation mode for group brainstorming sessions, plus Present in Window for remote window sharing, and a Jump To context menu for navigating idea spaces during presentations.
  • Custom figure data allows custom keys and formatted values to be associated with your project figures and available for search queries.
  • Custom variables for use throughout your project for dynamic text replacements.
  • Custom sharing actions to export data to other apps via 3rd party app URL schemes.
  • Custom appearance themes to fine-tune the look of your Curio interface.
  • Custom project backup settings.
  • External project library to support Spotlight searching of project assets.
  • External repositories for sharing styles, stencils, and templates with colleagues.
  • Project password for project security.