Lotus Agenda (1988) is still, for a lot of people, the best personal information manager ever written - and it has been gone for thirty years. I remember buying a copy and then spending a few days thinking 'What the heck do I do now?'. And then it 'clicked' and I was hooked. Facet carries the ideas of Agenda into a native Windows app for 2026: capture first, file later, and look at one body of data from as many angles as you like.
Agenda did something almost no tool since has matched. You typed a thought in plain English - "Call Fred next Tuesday about pricing" - and it worked out what the thought was about. Dates, people and projects became categories the item belonged to, and the same item could live in many categories at once without ever being copied or re-filed. You never had to decide which folder a thought went in before you could write it down.
When Lotus discontinued it, a generation of users went looking for a replacement and never quite found one. Ecco Pro, GrandView, InfoSelect and Zoot each carried part of the flame; most are now abandoned, Windows-XP-era, or both. Today's note apps mostly went the other way - rigid notebooks, folders and databases you have to design before you can use. Facet is built on the opposite instinct.
If you knew Agenda, you already know how Facet thinks.
Free-form lines you just type. Optional due date, repeat, Markdown notes and file attachments. Any item can be a note instead of a task with one tick.
A tree of tags - People > Fred, Projects > Pricing - and one item can carry as many as you like. Folders never made you choose just one; neither does Facet.
Flat lists, due-date buckets, category groups, matrices, calendars, value-grouped views. Each window is a saved query over the one database - edit anywhere, it updates everywhere.
Conditions set up in plain language, chained actions. Auto-tagging rules fire as you add and edit; named automations create items, open views, prompt, loop and branch - on a schedule or on demand.
If any of these were your daily driver, Facet will feel familiar - and current.
The same itemtype-and-folder fluidity, but a single local file, modern Unicode text, and no 32-bit ceiling.
Outline-grade structure where you want it, with categories and views layered on top instead of locked to one tree.
Capture-anything-then-make-sense-of-it, with a rules engine that files for you - on a supported, actively developed app.
Fast free-text capture and retrieval, minus the proprietary store - your data is one plain file you control.
A real 64-bit WPF desktop app. facet is not a DOS-box emulation or a browser tab pretending to be software. It can be installed or made fully portable and run from a USB stick.
Hit Ctrl+Alt+N from any application, type a line, and it lands in your database. Facet doesn't need to be in focus.
a week on Friday, the first Monday in June, tomorrow morning - parsed the way Agenda taught us to expect.
Your data stored in a JSON file you can back up, sync, version or move. You can even write your own programs to access the data! It outlives the app, by design.
A 14-day trial unlocks every feature - the same build as the paid version. If it clicks with you, a single licence is a one-off £79.
Facet