--- description: "Jotaid's six built-in thinking templates — literature note, decision record, problem framing, insight card, weekly review and brainstorm — with the skeleton behind each." --- # Note Templates Starting from a blank page is hard. The hard part is rarely the writing — it is **deciding what to write first**. So Jotaid ships six templates, each an ordered set of questions. ## Where They Are **macOS**: with no note selected, the right side shows the empty page, and its **TEMPLATES** section lays out six cards in a 2×3 grid. Click one and Jotaid immediately creates a note pre-filled with that skeleton and opens it, titled after the template. **iOS has no templates yet** — on iPhone, write straight into Quick Note, or open a note you started from a template on the Mac. ## The Six They are not document formats but six **ways of thinking**, each matching a common kind of task: | Template | In a line | Skeleton | |----------|-----------|----------| | **Literature Note** | Source, claims & your thinking | Source / Author → Core Claims → Key Quotes → My Thinking → Related | | **Decision Record** | Options, decision & rationale | Status → Context → Options → Decision & Rationale → Consequences | | **Problem Framing** | Find the real problem | Observations → The Real Problem → Stakeholders → Constraints → How Might We | | **Insight Card** | From observation to meaning | What I Observed → What It Means → Conflicts or Confirms → Related | | **Weekly Review** | Progress, blockers & focus | Progress This Week → Blockers → What I Learned → Focus for Next Week | | **Brainstorm** | Diverge, then converge | Prompt → Ideas → Themes → Most Promising → Next | ## The Italics Are Asking You Something Under many sections sits a line of italic text. It is not content to keep — it is **a question put to you**: ```markdown ## My Thinking *Where do you agree, doubt, or extend this?* ``` Answer it and delete the italic line. It exists only for the few seconds you spend staring at the blank space. > **A template is not a mould** > > What you get is an ordinary note. Delete sections, add sections, replace the lot. The title is pre-filled with the template's name, and renaming it is the norm rather than the exception. ## Why These Six They cover different links in one chain of thought: **Problem Framing** comes first (do not rush to solve the wrong problem), **Brainstorm** diverges, **Decision Record** converges, **Literature Note** brings in outside input, **Insight Card** settles your own judgement, and **Weekly Review** looks back. Use them for a while and you will notice these six sit naturally at different levels: decision records and weekly reviews often make good project notes, while insight cards and literature notes are the most typical atomic notes. See [Projects](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/projects). Custom templates are not supported yet. If you have a fixed structure of your own, keep one note holding that skeleton and duplicate it when you need it. ## Next Steps - [Note Formatting](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/markdown-editor) — How to write the syntax inside those skeletons - [Projects](https://docs.jotaid.com/en/guide/projects) — Which level a template's output belongs to