Nodes includes a quiet kind of intelligence. It reads your notes to suggest tags, write short descriptions, and raise reminders - and it does all of it on your Mac, with nothing sent anywhere.
What it does for you
- Tag suggestions - reads a note and proposes tags that fit, guided by the rules you set on your tags.
- Descriptions - writes a concise summary of a note. A note's description is also what powers semantic search, so once you've generated one, that note can be found by meaning, not just keywords.
- Reminders - when the background agent reviews a note, it also checks whether the note calls for a reminder and raises one when relevant.
You decide when it runs. In a Node Inspector section, click the small red square in the header to suggest tags or write a description for the current note - and click it again to regenerate. Unless you turn on the background agent, nothing is generated until you ask for it. To keep the agent off a single note, click Exclude from agent at the foot of its Node Inspector. The agent skips that note entirely, and its red squares turn grey so nothing is generated for it by hand either; Include in agent, in the same spot, lets it back in.
Across your whole library, the Home page collects every tag the model has suggested into a Review Suggestions card. Work through them one at a time - Accept to add the tag (it's created if it's new), or Dismiss to turn it down (it won't be suggested for that note again) - and jump straight to the note each suggestion came from.
The background agent
If you'd rather not press the button yourself, an optional agent can make the rounds for you. It's off by default; switch it on with the toggle in Settings ▸ Agent and it reviews your notes in the background, suggesting tags, descriptions, and reminders when relevant. It runs through the same path as the inspector's manual controls, so its results appear in the Node Inspector - and its tag suggestions in the Review Suggestions queue - like any other suggestion. It lets a note settle first: a note is reviewed only once two hours have passed since its last edit, and Run now on the Right Now card skips that wait.
The Agent tab is also where you watch and steer it: live status at a glance, automatic rules like Pause in Low Power Mode and Double speed when plugged in, an Agent speed slider that runs from one note every five minutes up to brisk, and a chart of how much of your library has been reviewed. The agent needs a model selected before it can be switched on. The Generates card has a switch for each kind of work - Descriptions, Tags, and Reminders. Turn one off and nothing new of that kind is made: the agent skips it, and for descriptions or tags the red square leaves the inspector too. What your notes already have stays.
On-device, by design
The intelligence runs locally. Your writing isn't uploaded, there's no account to sign into, and you don't need a connection for it to work. Privacy here isn't a setting - it's the architecture. See Where your files live for the full picture.
Choosing a model
You choose which model powers these features. On the latest macOS, the Apple Foundation Model card offers Apple Intelligence's built-in model - already on your Mac, nothing to download. If Apple Intelligence is switched off, the card points you to System Settings ▸ Apple Intelligence & Siri. You can also download and select a model of your own from within the app, and switch whenever you like.
Pick a smaller model for speed, or a larger one for sharper suggestions. Some models can also see images - a card's VISION spec says how well - and only a vision-capable model can describe or tag image notes; with a text-only model, the agent leaves them out of its rounds. Every card also lists what its model can do - Descriptions, Tags, Image nodes, and Reminders, each answered yes or no. Reminders need a downloaded model: the Apple Foundation Model writes descriptions and suggests tags, but while it's selected the agent raises no reminders.
The model in use shows on the Model card in Settings ▸ Agent. The same card holds the Primary Language picker: choose the language most of your notes are written in - thirteen to pick from: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), and Vietnamese - and AI output is written in it.
Managing your models
Click change on the Model card - or Choose a Model, which stands in for the agent's switch while none is selected - and the model catalog slides in. The page is split in two: Your Models at the top - the Apple Foundation Model and anything you've already downloaded - and All Models below, the catalog you can download from.
A model is its name, and a small ladder of five squares beside it shows how capable it is - the built-in one sits on the first rung. Hover the i and the specs appear: the underlying MODEL, its CAPABILITY rung, the recommended RAM, the DISK the download takes, and its VISION quality. Nodes checks what your Mac can handle, and the list is ordered so the models that fit come first. A model your Mac can't run is dimmed, offers no buttons, and names the reason below: it needs more memory than this Mac has, or there isn't enough free disk space for the download.
Interrupted downloads resume
If a download stops partway - you quit the app, or your connection drops - Nodes keeps the files it already fetched. The model surfaces at the top of the catalog marked Download paused; click resume to pick up where it left off, or discard to delete the partial files. Clicking cancel while a model downloads is different: it throws away what was fetched, and the next download starts from scratch.
Reclaim disk space
Models are large, and there's no reason to keep one you've stopped using. Click remove on a downloaded model's card and the space comes straight back. Removing the model in use also switches the agent off - pick another model, then turn the agent back on. And if a model you once downloaded is no longer offered in Nodes, a notice at the top of the list shows how much room those unused files take and lets you remove them - so old downloads don't quietly sit on your disk.