Module 1 · Level 1 · 10 min

The two doors, and your first map

One licence, two ways in — and they are the same app. Ten minutes to pick yours, install it, and make something.

Two doors, one app

Door	What it is	Best for
The app — `tabtree.app/me`	Unlock once with your key, then install it like a desktop app. Always the latest version, and it keeps working offline once it has been opened online.	Daily use
The file — `tabtree.app/download`	One HTML file on your disk. Double-click and it runs, with no internet, forever.	Offline, archives, locked-down machines

Both are the same full app. What differs is where the library lives: a browser keeps a separate one per address, so maps made in the app and maps made in the file sit on two shelves. Nothing is lost either way — and the folder is the bridge between them.

Install it — this one is not cosmetic

In Chrome or Edge, click the install icon at the right end of the address bar. TabTree gets its own window and its own icon in your dock.

The reason is not tidiness. Chrome only offers to remember folder access permanently for installed apps. In a plain tab you re-grant it once per session — one click, nothing lost, but a click you can retire forever in ten seconds.

Your first map takes three keys

Tab — a child. The idea underneath.
Enter — a sibling. The next idea at the same level.
⌘K — everything else. Every command in the app is in there, searchable, so you never have to hunt a toolbar.

That is genuinely the whole thing. If you want to feel it before you install anything, the front page lets you press those two keys on a live map.

Do not start from a blank canvas. Click ✨ Templates and open a real one — OKRs, meeting minutes, an org chart. Starting from a shape you recognise beats staring at a single node, and module 6 is about picking the right one.

The fine print, in plain words

Your key activates up to 5 browsers — 20 on Studio. The activation screen lists them, and you can release one you no longer use.
That activation happens once, at the first launch, and then never again. After it the file never talks to any server: open it on a disconnected laptop and it works, forever.
Your maps never reach us. They live in your browser and in your folder. Apart from that one activation, the only network calls the app makes are the AI features, and only when you use them.

Your turn

Install the app, open a template, and put a real subject in it — something you actually have to think about this week, not a test.

Then go straight to the folder. Everything you make before that setup lives in one browser profile, and only there.