---
title: "A personal knowledge base without the AI"
description: "Keep PDFs, documents, notes and links together and search the text inside all of them at once. OCR for scans and screenshots, and no AI."
source: https://savepad.app/use-cases/knowledge-base
---
# Your notes, PDFs and links. One search box.

Research papers, brand guidelines, the manual for the boiler, notes from a talk. Savepad pulls the text out of every PDF, doc and screenshot, so one search covers all of it. No second brain, no graph view, no AI summarising things you never asked it to.

[Join the waitlist](https://savepad.app/#waitlist) [How it works](#how)

*A search for "retention cohort" matching page 12 of a PDF, a note and a screenshot of a chart, with the PDF page open beside the results*

## Before and after

### How it goes now

- PDFs in Downloads called final(2).pdf
- Notes in three different apps
- Scanned docs nobody can search
- Links to docs that moved
- A graph view you opened once

### In Savepad

- Every PDF searchable to the page
- Notes right next to what they are about
- Scans and screenshots you can search
- A copy of every doc you save
- Folders and tags, no graph

## How Savepad helps

- **PDFs open on the right page.** Search finds the page that matched and opens the PDF right there.
- **Notes with context.** Add a note to any save, or keep a note as a save of its own. Markdown, obviously.
- **Text in images.** Scans, screenshots and photos of whiteboards get read on our own servers, so you can search them.
- **No AI, by design.** Nothing gets summarised or auto-tagged. What you save is what you find.

## What you'll be saving

[All 17 save types](https://savepad.app/save-types)

- [PDFs Opens on the page that matched](https://savepad.app/save-types#pdfs)
- [Notes A proper editor, on everything you save](https://savepad.app/save-types#notes)
- [Documents and other files CSVs as tables, Markdown rendered, everything else kept safe](https://savepad.app/save-types#files)
- [Web pages The live page, a reading copy, or your snapshot](https://savepad.app/save-types#web-pages)
- [Images and screenshots Zoom in, grab the colours, search the words](https://savepad.app/save-types#images)

## Who it's for

- [Product managers: Competitor info, pricing, flows, user research, everything you need for your retro](https://savepad.app/for/product-managers)
- [Developers: Snippets, docs, repos, quirks, everything you need, keyboard first](https://savepad.app/for/developers)
- [Just you: Recipes, trips, furniture, whatever. See it, save it.](https://savepad.app/for/you)

## FAQs

### Which files can it read?

PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, Markdown, text, CSV and images. The text inside all of them goes into search.

### Why no AI summaries?

Because a summary is a guess about what mattered to you. Savepad keeps the thing itself and helps you find it. The philosophy page has the long version.

[Next use case Swipe file Ads, pages and emails worth stealing from.](https://savepad.app/use-cases/swipe-file)

## Want in first?

Savepad launches soon. Leave your email and I'll let you know when it's live.