Frequently asked questions

Ounie is your AI second brain. You upload the things you read, watch, and write — files, links, notes, audio, and video — and Ounie turns them into a living, interlinked wiki you can ask anything, with answers cited straight back to your own sources.

Knowledge workers capture information constantly and lose it instantly. Notes apps store but don't think; chatbots are brilliant but don't know your stuff and can't cite it. "I know I saved this somewhere" is the problem Ounie exists to fix.

A notes app stores what you put in it. Ounie reads each source, synthesizes it into a clean wiki page, connects it to everything related, and lets you ask questions that draw across all of it — answering in plain language with citations.

General chatbots are trained on the public internet and can confidently make things up. Ounie answers only from the sources you added, and every claim links back to the exact page it came from. If the answer isn't in your brain, Ounie tells you instead of guessing.

A brain is a knowledge container — a collection of sources, their synthesized wiki pages, and the graph that connects them. You can keep separate brains for separate topics, projects, or clients.

Sign up at ounie.com, create your first brain, and add a source — a link, a note, or an uploaded file. Ounie reads it, builds wiki pages, and you can immediately start asking questions.

No. Your first brain is free forever and no credit card is required to start.

It's a core Ounie principle: answers come only from your sources, always with citations, and when the answer isn't there, Ounie says so. Trust is the product.

Researchers, students, consultants, creators, and small teams — anyone who lives in documents and wants an AI that knows their world, not just the public web.

Ounie is the AI that finally remembers everything you've ever learned — and helps you use it.

Yes. The web app at ounie.com is live in production, along with the iOS app, Chrome extension, and the public API + MCP connectors.

Every source you add makes the whole brain smarter and more connected — entity and concept pages grow with each addition, instead of every fact being re-discovered from scratch each time you ask. ---

PDFs and Word documents, images, audio and video files, web pages (via links), and plain notes or text.

Yes. Images are processed with OCR, so text inside an image becomes searchable, citable content in your brain.

Yes. Audio and video are transcribed automatically, then synthesized into wiki pages like any other source. (Audio/video ingestion is a Pro feature.)

Yes. Paste a URL and Ounie fetches the page, extracts the main content, and synthesizes it into your wiki.

Yes. Ounie supports YouTube link ingestion, pulling the content in so you can ask about it later.

A note is saved verbatim and bypasses synthesis — useful when you want the exact text preserved. Links, files, and text sources are read and synthesized into clean wiki pages.

Yes. You can add a text source that gets synthesized, or save it as a verbatim note if you want it kept exactly as written.

From your brain's Sources tab, paste a link, jot a note, or upload a file. Ounie processes it in the background and the new pages appear when ready.

Files are uploaded directly to secure cloud storage (AWS S3) via presigned URLs — the server never proxies your upload bytes. Your originals are kept immutable and never altered.

No. Your raw sources are stored as you added them — immutable. The synthesized wiki is a separate layer built on top of them.

Sources are processed in the background. Short text and links are typically quick; large files, long audio/video, and big PDFs take longer because of transcription and OCR.

Yes. Ounie has a bulk-import wizard that brings in your existing knowledge from tools like Notion and Obsidian, among other formats.

Yes — both are supported import sources. An empty brain even shows an "Import from Notion/Obsidian…" entry point to get you started fast.

Yes. Your brains are yours — you can delete any source (or a whole brain) at any time. ---

Open the Ask console for a brain and type your question in plain language. Ounie searches your brain, gathers the most relevant pages, and answers from them.

When you ask, Ounie vector-searches your brain, pulls the full wiki pages for the best matches plus their linked neighbor pages, and answers using only that context.

Yes. Every claim links back to the page it came from, so you can click through and verify the source.

Ounie tells you it doesn't have the information rather than inventing an answer. This is the "no hallucinations" guarantee.

No. Citations are resolved against the actual set of pages Ounie retrieved — the model can't invent a source link.

Yes. The Ask console has a Chat view and a List view; the List view shows past questions, and in shared brains it shows who asked each one.

Yes. The Ask console has a Chat ⇄ List toggle, plus a fullscreen expand option.

Yes. The List view has an "Only me" filter that appears when more than one person has asked questions in the brain.

Yes. Askers can react to answers, and brain owners can add push-back corrections. These appear in the brain's Feedback tab.

It lists asker reactions to answers and any corrections the owner has pushed back, so a brain's quality improves over time.

Yes. That's the point — Ounie pulls together the most relevant pages from across the whole brain and the concepts that connect them, then answers from all of it.

Answers are grounded strictly in your sources and cited, so accuracy reflects what you've added. Ounie won't fill gaps with outside guesses — it flags when something isn't covered.

Yes — that's a brain set. You pick a primary brain (your authoritative facts) and add one or more advisor brains (expertise like phrasing, structure, or strategy), and Ounie answers from both in a single response, tagging every citation by the brain it came from. The primary stays authoritative; an advisor shapes the answer but never overrides your facts, and when the two disagree the answer says so.

Brain Lab (under Lab in your dashboard) is where you compose a brain set: pick a primary brain, add advisors from your own brains or from Explore (including paid marketplace brains), and ask. The answer shows color-coded citations so you can see which brain each fact came from, and the Ship it tabs hand you a ready-made prompt, or an API/MCP snippet, to use the same blended answer anywhere.

Blending brains you own is a single question from your monthly allowance — no credits. Credits only apply when an advisor is a paid marketplace brain: you pay its per-question price, and only when that advisor actually contributes to the answer. ---

It's a self-building, Obsidian-style vault. An LLM reads each source and writes a clean page with wikilinks; key entities and concepts get their own pages that grow as you add more.

Wikilinks are the connections between pages. They let related pages reference each other, so concepts and entities form a connected web instead of isolated notes.

A visual map of how your ideas connect. Every concept and entity becomes a node you can explore, showing relationships across everything you've saved.

No. The wiki maintains itself — pages, entity pages, concept pages, and links are generated and grown automatically as you add sources.

A hybrid LLM-Wiki + RAG design: an LLM synthesizes each source into a coherent wiki page, while those pages are chunked and embedded into a vector index (pgvector) so retrieval stays fast at scale.

Most "chat with your docs" tools just chunk, embed, retrieve, and hope. Ounie keeps a coherent, cross-referenced wiki and adds vector search — giving you the trustworthiness of structured pages with the scale of retrieval, plus a knowledge graph for free.

When the same person, place, or idea shows up across sources, Ounie gives it its own page that accumulates everything known about it — so the brain gets richer, not just bigger.

Yes. Owners and editors can edit pages inline; the edit is re-indexed so future answers reflect your change.

Yes. When you edit a page, it's re-indexed so your edits are reflected in subsequent answers and retrieval.

Pages are chunked and embedded into a vector index, which keeps retrieval quick even at thousands of pages per brain and across millions of users. ---

On the Free plan, one brain. Pro and Team plans include unlimited brains.

Yes — private by default. Your brains are yours unless you choose to share or publish them.

Yes. You can keep a brain private, publish it publicly, or invite specific people to read or contribute.

Publishing makes a brain public (and SEO-indexed) for anyone to view; inviting gives specific people read or contributor access to an otherwise private brain.

Yes. Collaboration and shared brains with contributor seats are part of the Team plan.

Yes. Brain settings (visibility, people, sharing, limits, deletion) are guarded so only those with the right role can manage them.

Yes. Public brains live under your profile at a public URL, so others can browse what you've chosen to share.

Yes. Public brains are SEO-indexed, which is also part of how Ounie grows — every shared brain invites visitors to build their own.

Yes. Owners can set a per-brain chat cap so one brain can't be over-used or drain credits.

Yes. There's an "accepts suggestions" toggle and a suggestions inbox so others can propose sources you can approve.

Yes. Public brains support stars and follows as part of the social layer.

Yes. Ounie includes Report and Block controls as part of its moderation and safety features. ---

Forking lets you turn someone's public, fork-enabled brain into your own copy in one click — so you start with a populated, ask-able brain on day one.

No. A fork copies only the synthesized wiki layer — pages and their connections — never the raw source files. So no one's uploaded originals get redistributed.

No. Forks are private when created. You can publish later if you choose; published forked pages point search back to the original via canonical links.

Yes. A fork records where it came from, keeps a backlink to the original, and its answers cite back to the original public pages.

Yes. Forking is available on every plan and counts as a new brain against your brain limit.

No. A brain that's listed for sale in the marketplace can't be forked — forking and paid listings are mutually exclusive. ---

Three: Free ($0), Pro ($9.99/month or $99.90/year), and Team ($24.99/month or $249.90/year).

One brain, up to 50 sources, a one-time bank of 1,000 personal questions that never expires (instead of a daily limit), the knowledge graph, public sharing, files up to 10 MB, and unlimited website widgets with 1,000 included widget questions (a one-time lifetime allowance, pooled across all your widgets; "powered by Ounie" shown). No credit card required.

Unlimited brains, 5,000 sources, 5,000 AI questions per month, audio & video transcription, unlimited website widgets with 5,000 included widget questions a month (pooled), API & MCP access, priority processing, Landing Studio, up to three marketplace listings, 30 Auto-Research ingests a month, and files up to 100 MB.

Everything in Pro, plus unlimited sources, collaborators and shared brains with contributor seats, unlimited website widgets with 25,000 included widget questions a month (pooled), the option to remove "powered by Ounie", unlimited marketplace listings, 100 Auto-Research ingests a month, 30,000 AI questions per month, and files up to 500 MB.

Yearly billing gives you two months free — it's priced as ten months instead of twelve.

Free runs on a one-time bank of 1,000 personal questions that never expires. Pro is 5,000 questions per month and Team is 30,000 per month. Your remaining questions are shown in the dashboard. These are your own private questions — website-widget and paid-brain questions are metered separately (your widget allowance, then credits), not against this.

The Free plan caps a brain at 50 sources. Pro raises it to 5,000 and Team is unlimited. Maximum file size scales by plan too: 10 MB on Free, 100 MB on Pro, and 500 MB on Team. Total uploaded-file storage is 1 GB on Free, 25 GB on Pro, and 100 GB on Team — and you can free up space anytime by deleting sources.

Upgrade from your billing settings in the dashboard. On the web, billing is handled by Stripe; in the iOS app, subscriptions go through the App Store.

Yes. The iOS app sells Pro and Team subscriptions (and credit packs) through the App Store, and your plan syncs to your account automatically.

Yes. Whether you subscribe via Stripe on the web or via the App Store on iOS, your plan state is kept in sync across everywhere you use Ounie.

Manage it from your billing settings (web) or through your App Store subscriptions (iOS). Plan changes take effect without needing to sign out and back in.

The Pro or Team plan. API keys and MCP connectors are available on Pro and Team. ---

Credits are Ounie's universal currency. One credit equals one cent of face value, and a widget question costs half a credit. Website-widget questions first draw from your plan's included allowance (a one-time 1,000 lifetime on Free; 5,000/mo on Pro; 25,000/mo on Team — pooled across your widgets); credits are spent only for widget questions beyond that allowance, and for paid marketplace brains, Landing Studio composition, and Auto-Research runs. Your own private questions don't use credits — Free runs on its question bank, Pro and Team on a monthly quota.

You buy credit packs in a one-time checkout from your billing settings, on any plan — Starter (1,000 credits for $10), Growth (5,000 credits for $40), or Scale (20,000 credits for $120), and credits never expire. Owners of paid brains also earn credits when their brain is asked, and can cash those out to USD.

Yes. If you list a paid brain, you earn credits when people ask it, and you can cash out earned credits to USD.

The widget embeds one of your brains on a third-party site as a read/ask-only "Ask" bubble, so your visitors can ask questions answered from your brain.

Drop in the one-line embed script. It injects a launcher bubble and a chat iframe pointing at your brain's widget.

Widget questions are answered first from your plan's included allowance (a one-time 1,000 lifetime on Free; 5,000/mo on Pro; 25,000/mo on Team — pooled across all your widgets), then from your prepaid credits (half a credit each) — with an origin allowlist, a per-widget daily cap, and a per-brain cap so a single brain can't drain your allowance or wallet.

Yes. You can set the name, accent color, light/dark theme, a greeting, and suggested questions, with a live preview as you edit.

Every plan can create unlimited widgets. Free and Pro widgets show the "powered by Ounie" badge; Team can remove it. Included widget questions are a one-time 1,000 (lifetime) on Free, 5,000/mo on Pro, and 25,000/mo on Team; beyond that, widget questions draw from your credits.

Free includes a one-time bundle of 1,000 widget questions that doesn't reset — a lifetime allowance. Pro (5,000) and Team (25,000) reset every month. In all cases the bundle is pooled across all your widgets and doesn't roll over, and making more widgets doesn't increase it. Once it's used up, widget questions are billed to your credits (half a credit each), so your widgets keep answering as long as you have credits. ---

A place to sell access to a brain. You price a brain per question (in credits) or as a pass, and buyers spend credits to ask it. Buyers can try a few free preview questions first.

A paid plan and a connected Stripe account for payouts (with identity verification). Buying never requires a plan — only selling does.

The platform fee is 20% on Pro and 15% on Team. Pro can publish up to three paid listings; Team has unlimited listings.

Yes. Listings can be made "agent-ready" so autonomous agents can discover and pay for access programmatically, in addition to human buyers. ---

Yes — a native iOS app with full feature parity to the web, plus phone-native capture: photos, videos, files, audio recording, and on-device voice dictation.

Yes. The iOS Share Sheet "Save to Ounie" lets you push links, text, images, videos, and files from any app into a brain.

Yes. It can save a link, clip the main article, save a full page or a selection, collect highlights, open a clean reading view, and add right-click and keyboard-shortcut actions.

You can highlight passages on any page; they're saved to your account and reappear the next time you visit that page. You can save a page's highlights into a brain in one click.

No. It only sends Ounie the content you explicitly save or highlight, and it stores just your settings locally. It doesn't track your browsing or run analytics.

Yes. Ounie's MCP connectors let those AI clients read and add to your brain — listing brains, asking them, adding sources and notes, searching, and pulling context.

Two ways: install the MCP package (npx -y @ounie/mcp) with an API key, or connect the hosted MCP endpoint as a custom connector in Claude.ai or ChatGPT using OAuth — no API key needed.

Yes. Link your account once to the official Ounie bot, then capture links and notes or ask your brain right from Telegram using simple commands.

Yes. Add Ounie to a Slack workspace or Discord to capture content and ask your brain — via slash commands, mentions, or direct messages, all answered from your sources with citations.

Yes. Install the Ounie app from Settings → Shopify and Ounie loads your store's products, pages, blog articles, and policies (shipping, refund, privacy, terms) into a brain you choose — synthesized into the same wiki and graph as everything else. You authorize read-only access to your catalog, your billing and brains stay on ounie.com, and Shopify webhooks then keep the brain current automatically as your store changes.

Yes. The Ounie Ask widget installs as a Shopify theme app embed — no theme code. In the theme editor, turn on "Ounie Ask" under App embeds and paste your widget ID, and shoppers get a grounded, cited answer bubble drawn from your real products and policies. Your storefront domain is allowlisted automatically, and the widget is metered by your included widget allowance, then credits.

Yes. Connect a self-hosted WordPress site from Settings → WordPress and Ounie loads its published posts and pages into a brain you choose — synthesized into the same wiki and graph as everything else, with your categories, tags, author, and publish date carried along. You authorize read-only access with a WordPress Application Password (built into WordPress 5.6+ and revocable any time), and your site must be served over HTTPS. Self-hosted (.org) sites are supported today; WordPress.com is coming later.

Yes to both. Install the small Ounie Connector plugin and it keeps the brain current — when you publish, update, or delete a post it signals Ounie to re-sync just that page (it never sends your content; Ounie pulls the canonical version from your site). The same plugin can drop the grounded, cited Ounie Ask widget onto your site site-wide, or on specific pages with the [ounie] shortcode or block, metered by your included widget allowance then credits.

Yes. Brains are private by default and shareable only by your choice. Answers are grounded and cited (the model can't invent links), rendered content is sanitized, files are stored securely, and you can delete your data or your account at any time. Private by default, shareable by choice, and present everywhere you work.