Getting started
The five-minute tour. Sign up, write a doc, edit it with AI, share by link. Every claim on this page is verified against the live app.
This page walks you through the first five minutes in sweetdocs. By the end you’ll have a real document, an AI-assisted edit on it, and a shareable link.
The short version: sign up, open the command palette with ⌘K, pick New document, and start typing. Drag any .docx, .pdf, or other supported file onto the window to import.
Sign up
Two methods on the signup form:
- Email + password. Enter your email and a password (12 characters minimum). We send a confirmation email; click the link to activate the account. The confirmation step happens once per account.
- Google. One click. We get your email + name + avatar. No Calendar, Drive, or contacts access.
No credit card. The Free plan is forever — see Plans for the limits.
Magic-link sign-in isn’t supported in v1. If you forget your password, use the Forgot password link on the login page — see Password + recovery.
The Welcome doc
On first sign-in you land on a pre-created doc called Welcome to sweetdocs in your Personal library. It’s a tiny tour of the editor, the command palette, slash commands, sharing, history, and AI Author — written in the same Markdown you’ll be writing in.
Leave it where it is for reference, or delete it once you’ve read through (you can always restore from the Recycling Bin within 30 days).
Make a new document
There are two ways:
- Open the command palette with ⌘K, then pick New document. The shortcut works from any screen in the app.
- Click the Doc button in the sidebar. Same result.
The new doc lands at the top of your Personal library, in your current folder if you’re inside one. It opens in Edit mode with a blinking caret in the body. The placeholder reads:
Write something, or type / for commands…
The doc has no title yet — it’ll show as Untitled in the sidebar until you set one.
Setting a title
Click the title in the toolbar (top-left) to enter edit mode. Type a name, then press Enter to commit (or Esc to cancel). Empty titles fall back to Untitled.
Edit and Preview modes
The eye / pencil icon in the toolbar (or ⌘E) toggles between two views:
- Edit mode. The typing surface. Markdown is parsed live — what you type becomes the rendered shape as you type.
- Preview mode. Read-only. Same render as what public-link viewers see. Useful for proofreading.
Markdown documents open in Preview mode if they have content; new empty docs open in Edit mode.
Bring your existing writing in
Three paths, and the path determines where the content lands. The split is the thing most new users get wrong, so it’s worth being precise:
| What you do | Where it goes | Format scope |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Into the current doc | — |
| Paste (text or image) | Into the current doc, at your cursor | All paste sources |
| Drag a doc-format file onto the window | Becomes a new doc | .md .txt .docx .rtf .pdf |
| Drag an image into the editor body | Embeds inline in the current doc | PNG / JPG / WebP / GIF / AVIF / HEIC / HEIF |
1. Type it
The obvious one. Markdown syntax works literally (## Heading becomes a heading); the slash menu gives you the same blocks without typing. Press / at the start of an empty line for the menu — see The slash menu for the full list.
2. Paste — always into the current doc
Hit ⌘V with focus in the editor body. The content lands at your cursor.
What we detect:
- From an AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) — Markdown shape preserved. Headings stay headings, code blocks stay code blocks. See Pasting from AI tools.
- From a code editor (Cursor, VS Code, JetBrains, terminal) — the editor’s
white-space: preHTML signature is detected and the text is routed through the Markdown parser instead of being turned into one giant code block. - From a webpage — site chrome, ads, font overrides stripped; structure (headings, lists, tables, links) survives. See Pasting from the web.
- From Word, Google Docs, Notion — Markdown-shaped HTML rides through with structure intact.
- An image (screenshot tool, browser “Copy image”, another editor) — uploads and embeds inline at the cursor. Accepted: PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, HEIC, HEIF. 10 MB per image.
3. Drag — doc files become new docs
Drag a .md, .txt, .docx, .rtf, or .pdf file from your desktop and drop it anywhere on the sweetdocs window. A translucent overlay appears across the whole app:
Drop to upload into [Personal]
.md · .markdown · .txt · .docx · .rtf · .pdf
Where [Personal] is the deepest folder you’re currently inside — if you’re at a folder, the new doc lands in that folder; if you’re at a library root, it lands at the library root; if you’re at the Personal-library top level, it lands there.
After the import:
- One file → you navigate straight into the new doc.
- Multiple files → a “N documents imported into [Folder]” success toast; the docs appear in the sidebar.
What gets created:
| Extension | Becomes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
.md / .markdown | A new doc, content preserved | Front-matter is dropped |
.txt | A new doc | Lines → paragraphs |
.docx | A new doc with structure | Styles, tables, embedded images extracted |
.rtf | A new doc | Basic structure preserved |
.pdf | A new doc via layout heuristics | OCR runs on scanned PDFs |
Per-file cap: 25 MB. If no library is active (e.g., you’re on the org library picker), the overlay reads Pick a library first to upload and the drop is rejected.
Image files (PNG, JPG, etc.) dropped onto the app window do nothing — they’re not a document format, so they error out. To get an image into a doc, drop it into the editor body of an open doc — see the next sub-section.
Drop an image into an open doc
When the editor pane is the drop target (image files dropped over the writing surface itself), the image embeds inline at the drop position rather than creating a new doc. Same accepted formats as paste; same 10 MB cap.
This is the only way to embed an image directly. Dragging an image onto the sidebar or onto the app shell will not work — the doc-import handler runs first and rejects the format.
See Importing files for the per-format detail and Adding images for the image specifics.
Use the AI Author
The AI Author button is at the right end of the toolbar — a small AI chip in your current accent color (Grape by default, or whichever theme you’ve picked from Themes). Click it (or press ⌘⇧A on Mac / Ctrl+Shift+A on Windows / Linux) to open the panel on the right.
Ask in plain English:
- “Tighten this paragraph”
- “Rewrite the intro to be punchier”
- “Add a section about the budget”
- “Fix the typos”
The AI Author operates on the document, not in chat. It reads the full doc plus your selection (if you have one) for context, proposes an edit, and shows it as a diff:
- The old text is highlighted red with strikethrough.
- The new text is highlighted green.
Two buttons appear above the diff:
- Accept — merges the change into the doc.
- Discard — drops the proposal. The doc is unchanged.
Nothing lands until you click. The AI Author is non-destructive by design.
AI Author has a monthly message cap that depends on your plan. Hitting the cap returns a friendly notice with the upgrade path. Exact limits live on the Plans page.
Save and versions
You never press save. After ~1 second of no typing, the doc syncs to the cloud — you’ll see the toolbar’s status indicator transition through Editing → Saving → Saved.
History versions are created at meaningful boundaries (not on every keystroke):
- When you switch from Edit to Preview mode.
- When you explicitly open the History panel.
- When you restore a previous version (the restore itself becomes a version).
To see history, click the clock icon in the toolbar — the History panel slides in from the right with every version timestamped and previewable. Click any version to see it in the editor; click Restore to bring it back. See Version history for the full panel guide.
Share a draft
Click Share in the toolbar (the share-nodes icon). The Share dialog opens with two tabs:
Public link tab
Flip the Anyone with the link can view (read-only) checkbox. A URL appears in the format:
https://my.sweetdocs.app/share/<token>Copy it, send it. The recipient doesn’t need a sweetdocs account. Flip the checkbox off to kill the link instantly.
Optional fields:
- Expiry date — set a date after which the link stops working.
See Share by public link for the full detail.
Invite people tab (default)
Type an email, pick Read or Write, click Invite. They get an email with a sign-in link; the doc lands in their Shared-with-me library. See Invite by email.
What’s next
You now have enough to actually use sweetdocs day-to-day. A few next stops:
- The command palette. ⌘K from anywhere — every action in the product is one keystroke away.
- The slash menu. Press / at the start of any line to insert a heading, list, table, code block, image, or divider.
- Keyboard shortcuts. The full list of bindings, grouped by what you’re trying to do.
- The AI Author. The deep-dive on prompts, diffs, and the quota model.
If anything didn’t get answered here, email support@sweetdocs.app. We answer.