Heptabase lays your ideas out on a canvas. XESO answers questions about them. Both respect your thinking; only one hands you cited answers the moment you ask.
Free for 25 notes · 14-day Pro trial · monthly launch pricing
XESOvsHeptabase
Product peek
Capture first. Get answers without arranging a board.
The capture surface routes saved links and files into the library, then scoped chat answers questions across them — no canvas to lay out by hand.
At-a-glance scorecard
Relative fit for long-horizon knowledge work
XESO0.0/108.9/10
Heptabase0.0/108.1/10
Where Heptabase wins
Heptabase is the right answer when thinking spatially is the point — a researcher mapping a literature review, a student connecting cards on an infinite whiteboard. Arranging ideas by hand is its craft, and it does it beautifully.
Where XESO wins
No board to build first — capture, then ask, and the answer shows the exact note it came from.
How XESO grounds answers — the citation floor
XESO answers only from passages it can cite. When a question’s retrieval falls below the citation floor, it says so — “I don’t have enough in your library to answer that” — instead of guessing. Every answer it does give links back to the exact saved note behind each claim.
Capture → filing → chat is the default path — not a canvas you assemble before the work pays off.
Retrieval with citations is built in; ask a question and see the exact note the answer came from.
Question:Which notes mention the Simplicity Contract?
XESO
Four notes in your library reference the Simplicity Contract: the product spec, the design token addendum, and two decision memos from March.
Product spec — Simplicity Contract
The Simplicity Contract is the governing constraint: every feature must reduce friction, not add it.
Heptabase
Heptabase shines when you arrange cards on a whiteboard and see relationships spatially. To answer this you would search your cards and scan the board visually — it surfaces matching cards rather than a synthesised answer with citations.
Heptabase returns cards to arrange, not a cited answer to your question.
Stop arranging. Start asking.
XESO works the minute you save your first link. See Pro features with a 14-day trial.
