Craft Docs is one of the most beautifully designed writing apps available. It is also, for many knowledge workers, a graveyard of well-formatted documents — beautiful notes with nowhere to go, because Craft has no task system and no way to connect a note to the work it generates.
Tareea is the Craft Docs alternative with task management built in — a beautiful note app that matches Craft's design quality, runs cross-platform on Windows and every browser, and gives you a no-AI guarantee by architecture.
This page is for two kinds of Craft user. Those leaving because of the AI integration. And those who love how Craft looks but have discovered that beautiful documents without an operational layer eventually become an archive of good intentions. Both are valid reasons to look for a Craft Docs alternative. Before explaining where Tareea starts, it is worth being precise about what Craft gets right — because both audiences already know, and they will not trust a page that doesn't acknowledge it.
For many Craft users, the problem is not the AI. It is the silence after the writing. A meeting note that generates four action items. A strategy document that requires three follow-up decisions. A brief that needs to be tracked, updated, and revisited over six weeks. Craft holds all of this beautifully. It does nothing with it.
Craft has no native task system. Tasks written as bullet points in a Craft document are not tasks — they are text. They have no due date, no priority, no connection to a dashboard or a planning surface. They exist in the document and only in the document. When the document is filed away, they disappear with it.
The result is a workspace full of well-formatted documents that generated work nobody tracked. The aesthetic is preserved. The execution is not.
Tareea gives Craft users the operational engine their documents have been missing — without compromising the aesthetic quality that made them choose Craft in the first place. The same considered typography. The same clean writing surface. Focus Mode. Typewriter Mode. And a task system where every task carries a permanent link back to the note where it was born. Your documents no longer dead-end. They generate work that remembers where it came from.
Craft Assistant uses a hybrid model architecture. The details matter, and they deserve to be stated precisely.
Craft Assistant uses a hybrid approach. Simpler tasks run on-device using Apple Intelligence and local models. Deeper analysis and longer conversations — Craft's own description — run on cloud-based models from leading third-party AI providers. When you use the cloud-based features, your note content is sent to these models.
Craft's privacy controls allow you to choose between on-device and cloud models. But the architecture assumes AI is part of the workspace. The on-device option requires active management. The default path sends content to the cloud.
For many users this is acceptable. For journalists working with sources, researchers handling unpublished work, strategists managing confidential client thinking, or anyone whose notes contain thinking they are not ready to share — it is not. Some work is too sensitive, too personal, or too unfinished to pass through a model.
Tareea has no AI features. Not as an option you can toggle off. Not as a paid add-on. Not at all. No note content is ever sent to a model. No task is ever processed by inference.
The architecture does not include a path for content to leave your database for AI processing — because that path was never built.
This is not a competitive positioning decision that could change with the next update. It is an architectural one. Adding AI to Tareea would require building the infrastructure from scratch. We have no intention of doing that.
What you write is encrypted before it leaves your device. In Private mode — the default for every new account — even your note titles, task titles, Folio names, and tags are encrypted. We can't read it. No model reads your notes. No agent acts on your writing.
Craft's sharing puts your content into Craft's infrastructure — which now has AI processing behind it. Note Share is the opposite. When you publish a note in Tareea, a snapshot of the version you chose is delivered under passkey protection, expiring when you decide, from a workspace where the content never passes through a model.
The recipient receives a read-only reading page. They cannot edit or download the note, and the link expires when you decide. The note stays in Tareea. Nothing is handed to the recipient permanently. When your thinking evolves, republish — the same URL updates, no new link required.
Craft is available on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. There is no Windows version, no Android version, no web app. If any part of your work happens on a device outside the Apple ecosystem — a work Windows machine, a shared computer, an Android phone — Craft is not available.
Tareea is a web app. Open it on any device with a modern browser. Your workspace follows you — not the platform you happen to be using. The note you started on your Mac is available on a Windows machine at the office, an Android phone on the train, or a browser you don't control.
The official version and the real version are probably different. Find out whether the board saw the risk assessment before or after the vote.
Cross-reference the timeline with the leaked February memo. Check if her name appears in the subsidiary filings→ Create a task — it might. Send a thank-you within 24 hours.
Craft holds your documents beautifully. Tareea adds a view Craft has no equivalent for. The Connection Map shows every note and task in a project as a spatial graph — nodes joined by lines drawn the moment each task was created. Notes that generated more action have more lines radiating outward. You see which documents are driving the work before you read a single label.
A folder of beautiful documents tells you nothing about when the work inside them is due. The Timeline does — sixty days ahead, fourteen behind, your tasks as coloured dots distributed across the calendar. Dense where work is concentrated, open where there is room. Drag a dot to reschedule; hover one to see the task. The aesthetic is preserved — and now the execution is too.
This table is honest about where Craft is better. The reader will trust the whole page more for it.
| Feature | Craft | Tareea | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Writing environment | Excellent — block-based | Excellent — prose-first | Different philosophies. Craft's blocks are more structured. Tareea's editor is continuous prose — write first, structure later. |
| AI assistant | Yes — hybrid on-device + cloud (third-party AI models) | Never — by architecture | The core difference. Craft's AI reads your workspace on cloud models. Tareea has no AI path — not as a setting, as a structural fact. |
| Note-to-task connection | Tasks inside notes — no backlink | Permanent automatic backlink | Craft has tasks as blocks inside documents. Tareea tasks carry a permanent link back to the note where they were born. |
| Privacy architecture | AI opt-out available — active management required | No AI path exists | Craft's default path sends content to cloud models. Tareea's architecture has no such path — the opt-out is an architectural fact. |
| Controlled note sharing | Sharing uses Craft's infrastructure — AI-processed | Note Share — snapshot, passkey, expiry · Pro | Craft sharing puts content through its AI infrastructure. Note Share is a controlled reading window — nothing is handed over permanently, content never passes through a model. |
| End-to-end encryption | Not end-to-end encrypted | Always on, every tier | Tareea encrypts content before it leaves your device. Even titles and tags are encrypted in Private mode. |
| Platform availability | Apple only — Mac, iPhone, iPad | Web — any device | Craft's API and deepest features remain Apple-optimised. Tareea is the cross-platform Craft Docs alternative for Windows, Android, and any browser — full feature parity, no installation. |
| Connection Map | None | Spatial graph · Pro | See which notes generated the most work and which threads are still open. |
| Timeline planning | None | 60-day timeline · Pro | Drag tasks across time spatially. Craft has no temporal planning view. |
| Offline support | Full offline — Craft advantage | Partial — PWA with offline cache | Craft works fully offline. Tareea has PWA offline support but is primarily web-first. |
| Version history | Full version history — Craft advantage | Last 10 versions Free · last 50 Pro | Both tools have version history. Craft's implementation is currently more comprehensive. |
| Markdown export | Yes | Unlimited .md export | Neither tool locks your data in a proprietary format. |
| Price | $9.99/mo Plus (approx) | Free · $9/mo Pro | Similar pricing. Tareea is free forever. |