Handwriting + AI
How do I ask questions across all my handwritten notes?
Updated
Short answer: the AI has to be able to search your notes, not just read the ones you upload. That needs every page transcribed to text, and an assistant connected to that text so it can look things up when you ask.
On a Boox tablet, Margen does both: it transcribes each page you write and lets Claude or ChatGPT search and read all of them.
Why can't I just upload all my notebooks?
Asking about one notebook is easy: export it, attach it, ask. Asking across a year of notes is a different problem.
- Size. A year of handwritten pages is hundreds of images. That's more than you can attach to one chat, and far more than you'd want to.
- You have to know where to look. To upload the right notebook you need to remember where you wrote it, which is the thing you were trying to avoid.
- It goes stale. The upload is a snapshot. Next week's pages aren't in it.
What works is the same thing that makes typed notes searchable: text, an index, and an assistant that can query it.
How it works with Margen
- Write in Margen on your Boox. Each page is read by a vision model when the tablet is online, and gets its text, a short title and a one-line summary.
- Connect your assistant once. Claude on any plan, including Free: add Margen from Claude's connector directory (Customize → Connectors → Browse connectors). ChatGPT on paid plans, at
https://connector.getmargen.app/mcp. Setup is in the connector documentation. - Ask in plain words. The assistant searches your notes, opens the pages that match, reads them and answers, usually naming the notes it used.
Because search covers both the handwriting and the summary, a note is found by a word you wrote once, or by its topic when you abbreviated everything.
Questions that work well
- "When did I first write about moving to Lisbon, and how did my thinking change?"
- "What have I promised people in the last month? List who and what."
- "Find every book recommendation in my notes."
- "I wrote a formula for churn somewhere in the spring. Find it and explain it back to me."
- "What do my journal pages from September say about sleep?"
Tips for better answers
- Name a period when you can ("last week", "in October"): the assistant can list recent notes and narrow down.
- Ask it to cite. "Say which note each point comes from" makes the answer easy to check.
- Ask it to look at the page when a diagram, a table or a crossed-out word matters. Margen keeps the page image next to the text.
- Write a heading. The first line of a page often becomes its title. "1:1 Sam, 14 Oct" is easier to find than a page that starts mid-sentence.
Questions
Can AI search all my handwritten notes at once?
Yes, if the notes are transcribed and the assistant can search them. Margen transcribes every page you write on a Boox and lets Claude or ChatGPT search and read all of them through a read-only connector.
Do I have to upload my notebooks every time?
Not with Margen. Pages are transcribed in the background, and new pages are searchable once the tablet has synced.
Which assistants can I ask?
Claude on every plan, including Free, and ChatGPT on paid plans. Gemini and Microsoft Copilot are not supported yet.
Can I ask on my phone?
Yes. Once the connector is added, you can ask from the Claude mobile apps; you write on the Boox and ask from anywhere.