Dura Update - April 2026

So… What Is Dura Notes?

In short, Dura Notes is my attempt to make a tool designed to help humans read, learn, think, and write without the temptation of taking AI shortcuts. It’s an app designed to help you focus on human thinking.

I can almost sympathize with people who think AI research is a good idea. We’re human, after all. It’s tempting to take shortcuts when they’re available, and if AI is anything right now, it’s available, like freaking everywhere.

And if the goal is to get the research from its original sources to a nice summary on your screen, well, it’s hard to argue that AI isn’t the most efficient way to do that. AI removes all the friction of finding research, recording it, and making a summary that you can digest easily.

The issue, of course, is that friction is a good thing when your goal is to learn.

It’s kind of like how all of our parents and grandparents hate using Google Maps because they’d rather know exactly where they’re going. I can sympathize; I use Google Maps all the time, and I have to say I don’t really know my way around even my hometown as well as I would if I’d been forced to figure out my routes on my own.

Google Maps is great when my goal is just to get there. But finding my way around, finding out about the back roads and shortcuts the hard way, is the only way to actually learn where I’m going.

Why Dura Notes Exists

There are many reasons I’m making this app, but at the top of the list is my struggle with ADHD.

To continue our Google Maps analogy, my ADHD manifests as the desire to just turn at every random road I come across and see where it goes. Will it get to my destination? Who knows. What even was my destination anyway?

I find it hard to ignore the ability to take a shortcut with AI. I believe it’s wrong in many ways to use AI tools, but I also think it’s beneficial in some ways (writing, as you’ll hear me say often, is one application where I think outsourcing my thinking to a server rack in a data center is gross).

And yet, so many times I’d find myself ADHD’ing my way into missing a deadline and having no choice but to take shortcuts to catch up. I’m not proud of it; but I’m human.

Dura Notes started as a way for me to make myself a refuge from the pressures of using AI. It’s everywhere, have you noticed? Check my gmail, and there’s Gemini trying to take over my emails for me. Open my iPhone and there’s a notification that I haven’t activated Apple Intelligence. And worst of all, opening Microsoft Office at work and getting an absolute fire-hose of Copilot shoved in my face.

Dura has become my quiet place, where I can still go down rabbit holes, but they’re rabbit holes of my own choosing, not force fed to me by an algorithm. It’s boosted both my productivity and creativity by letting me go through the friction of managing my own knowledge without having to fight through the unneeded friction of ignoring a thousand shortcuts in order to stay focused.

There’s still some work to do, but I hope that very soon Dura can do the same things for you.

Where Dura Stands Today

• The Mac app is going through detailed testing. It’s starting to feel like a pretty natural place to keep my notes, and I’ve started using it for my own research constantly, which is a great way to hunt for bugs.

• I’ve made some tough decisions about features to include in v1.0 and which ones need some more polish. It’s so hard not to want to release everything at once, but in the end I’d rather ship an app that does its job well, and then build on top of that

• iOS app has been a little bit on the back burner as I try to get the Mac version ready to roll. iPad is in better shape than iPhone currently, but it’s looking like those will need to be deferred to a later release.

• I’ve also started thinking about how Dura might work in a Windows build. I’m not as familiar with that ecosystem in my development work, but there’s a chance I work that into the roadmap somewhere in the future. Stay tuned…

More updates coming soon!

Cheers,

Dave