PonderOS User Guide

Your AI Chief of Staff — Get Started in 5 Minutes

#What is PonderOS?

PonderOS is your AI-powered chief of staff. Paste anything — meeting notes, documents, tasks, research — and Lumen, your AI assistant, does the heavy lifting:

📋 Organizes your work — Auto-sorts documents, creates tasks, builds context
🧠 Remembers everything — Searchable vault with intelligent memory
🔍 Researches for you — Web search, document analysis, real-time answers
✅ Manages tasks — Kanban board synced with your work
💬 Natural conversation — Ask questions, get insights, move work forward

No prompting. No setup. Just paste and go.

#Quick Start (5 Minutes)

#1. Create Your First Document

Click "+ New Document" or press Cmd/Ctrl+N
Paste meeting notes, a project plan, or research
Press Cmd/Ctrl+S to save

Lumen automatically:

Extracts tasks → adds to kanban
Identifies key concepts → builds memory graph
Makes it searchable across your entire vault

#2. Ask Lumen Anything

Open the AI Chat Panel (right sidebar):

What were the action items from today's standup?

Summarize all the docs about the Q1 product launch

Search the web for recent GPT-5 announcements and add to my notes

Lumen has 21 tools at her disposal — vault search, web research, task management, memory recall, and more.

#3. Organize Your Vault

Your vault has 3 core folders (PARA method):

📁 Projects — Active work with deadlines
📁 Areas — Ongoing responsibilities (team management, strategy)
📁 Resources — Reference materials, guides, notes

Pro tip: Lumen auto-suggests folders based on document content. Accept or customize as needed.

#4. Manage Tasks

Click "Tasks" in the sidebar to see your kanban board:

Backlog — Ideas and future work
Todo — Ready to start
Done — Completed work

Tasks sync with your documents. When Lumen extracts action items from notes, they appear here automatically.

#Core Features

#📝 Vault — Your Second Brain

The vault is a searchable, AI-enhanced knowledge base for everything you work on.

How it works:

Create documents — Markdown editor with rich formatting
Organize — Folders, tags, projects
Search — Instant full-text search across all docs
Ask Lumen — Natural language queries pull relevant context

Use cases:

Meeting notes → auto-extract tasks
Project documentation → cross-reference related work
Research → save web findings as docs
Decisions → build searchable history

#🤖 Lumen AI — Your Chief of Staff

Lumen isn't a chatbot. She's a chief of staff with access to:

Tool	What it does
Vault Search	Find relevant docs, people, projects
Memory Recall	Pull context from your knowledge graph
Web Search	Research topics, find current info
Web Fetch	Extract content from URLs
Task Management	Create, update, list tasks
Document Analysis	Summarize, extract action items
Code Tools	Read, edit, search code (Pro)
File Management	Organize, rename, move docs (Pro)

21 tools total. She picks the right one for each query.

Example workflows:

Planning a 1:1:

Pull all notes from my last 3 1:1s with Sarah and draft an agenda

→ Lumen searches vault, finds past meetings, extracts open items, drafts agenda

Researching a decision:

Search for articles about Postgres vs MongoDB for time-series data, 
summarize the tradeoffs, and save to my Resources folder

→ Lumen searches web, extracts key points, creates a new doc

Weekly review:

What tasks did I complete this week? Draft a status update for my manager.

→ Lumen queries kanban, pulls Done tasks, writes summary

#✅ Tasks — Lightweight Kanban

PonderOS has a built-in task board that syncs with your documents.

3 columns:

Backlog — Future ideas
Todo — Ready to start
Done — Completed

How tasks get created:

Lumen extracts them from meeting notes, project plans, chat
You create them manually via the Tasks page
You ask Lumen ("Add a task to review the PRD by Friday")

Task metadata:

Title, description
Due date, priority
Project, tags
Linked docs

Pro tip: Ask Lumen to organize your backlog:

Show me all high-priority tasks due this week

#🧠 Memory — Intelligent Context

Lumen builds a knowledge graph from your vault:

People — Colleagues, stakeholders, contacts
Projects — Active initiatives
Concepts — Frameworks, tools, strategies
Decisions — What you decided and why

How it helps:

"What did we decide about the API architecture?" → Lumen recalls the exact decision + context
"Who owns the mobile redesign?" → Lumen finds the person + their docs
"Show me all docs about pricing strategy" → Lumen pulls related content

Memory is built automatically. No tagging required.

#Power User Tips

#Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
New document	`Cmd/Ctrl+N`
Save document	`Cmd/Ctrl+S`
Search vault	`Cmd/Ctrl+K`
Toggle AI panel	`Cmd/Ctrl+L`
Open tasks	`Cmd/Ctrl+T`

#Advanced Lumen Queries

Multi-step workflows:

Search for the 5 most recent articles about Rust performance vs Go, 
summarize the key benchmarks, and create a comparison table in a new doc 
called "Rust vs Go Performance 2026"

Cross-document analysis:

Pull all action items from my Q1 planning docs and create a master task list

Automation:

Every Monday, create a weekly review doc with tasks completed last week 
and goals for this week

(Pro feature — task automation)

#Folder Structure Best Practices

Use the PARA method:

Projects — Time-bound work with clear outcomes
- Example: Projects/Q1-Product-Launch/
Areas — Ongoing responsibilities
- Example: Areas/Team-Management/1on1s/
Resources — Reference materials
- Example: Resources/Engineering-Playbooks/

Why it works:

Clear separation between active work and reference
Easy to archive completed projects
Lumen can suggest relevant resources when you're working on a project

#Common Workflows

#1. Meeting Notes → Action Items

Before the meeting:

Create a new doc called "Standup 2026-04-04" and draft an agenda

During the meeting:

Paste notes into the doc as the meeting happens
Save periodically (Cmd/Ctrl+S)

After the meeting:

Extract all action items from this doc and add them to my tasks

→ Lumen creates tasks automatically, linked to the meeting doc

#2. Research → Knowledge Base

Goal: Research a topic and save findings to your vault

Search for articles about Next.js App Router performance in 2026. 
Find the top 3, summarize the key optimizations, and save as a new doc 
in Resources/Engineering-Playbooks/

→ Lumen searches, summarizes, creates doc, saves to correct folder

#3. Weekly Review

Goal: Reflect on the week, plan next week

What tasks did I complete this week?

→ Lumen queries kanban, shows Done tasks

Pull highlights from all my meeting notes this week

→ Lumen searches vault, extracts key moments

Create a weekly review doc with completed tasks, key decisions, 
and goals for next week

→ Lumen drafts the review, you refine

#4. Project Planning

Goal: Start a new project with clear structure

Create a new project folder called "Mobile App Redesign" with docs for:
- Project brief
- Technical spec
- Timeline
- Open questions

→ Lumen creates folder + starter docs

Based on our past mobile projects, what are the common risks we should track?

→ Lumen recalls past projects, suggests risks

#Free vs Pro

Feature	Free	Pro
Documents	25 docs	Unlimited
AI queries	50/month	Unlimited
Vault storage	Local only	Cloud sync
Lumen tools	15 tools	21 tools (code, file mgmt)
Task automation	Manual	Auto-create from docs
Memory depth	Basic graph	Advanced reasoning
Support	Community	Priority email

Pro is $19/month.

Founding 100: First 100 users get Pro at $12/month forever (67% off, locked in for life).

#FAQ

#How does Lumen know what to do?

Lumen has 21 specialized tools and picks the right one based on your query. When you ask a question, she:

Analyzes the request — What are you asking for?
Chooses tools — Vault search? Web research? Task creation?
Executes — Runs the tools, synthesizes results
Responds — Gives you the answer + shows her work

You don't prompt her. You just ask naturally.

#Is my data private?

Free (local mode):

All data stays on your machine
No cloud sync, no external access
AI queries go to OpenAI/Anthropic APIs (encrypted in transit)

Pro (cloud mode):

Data synced to Supabase (encrypted at rest + in transit)
You own your data — export anytime
Zero-knowledge encryption planned for Q2 2026

#Can I use my own API keys?

Pro users: Yes. Bring your own OpenAI/Anthropic keys and avoid per-query costs. Instructions in Settings.

#What models does Lumen use?

Default: Gemini Flash 2.0 (fast, cost-effective)

Pro upgrades:

GPT-4.5 Turbo (better reasoning)
Claude Opus (deep analysis)
Configurable per workspace

#Can I export my vault?

Yes. Settings → Export Vault downloads all docs as Markdown files. Your data is never locked in.

#What happens if I cancel Pro?

You drop to Free:

Keep all docs (first 25 remain editable)
Cloud sync stops (vault becomes local-only)
AI queries drop to 50/month
Advanced tools (code, file mgmt) disabled

No data loss. You can export before canceling.

#Get Help

Docs: ponderos.com/docs
Support: hello@ponderos.com

Welcome to PonderOS. Let Lumen handle the rest. 💙