Skip to main content

Capturing Content

Get information into Sylva from any source — quick notes, shared links, forwarded emails, GitHub activity, and more.

Sylva gives you multiple ways to capture information — from a fast manual note to automated pipelines from email, Slack, GitHub, and the web — so nothing slips through the cracks regardless of where you're working.

Quick Capture page

Quick Capture

The Quick Capture page is the fastest way to save a thought, note, or snippet. On mobile, tap the capture button in the header. On desktop, select Quick Capture from the sidebar.

The page auto-focuses the Content field so you can start typing immediately. You can also add:

  • Title — an optional label to make the capture easier to find later
  • URL — click Add URL to attach a source link
  • Context — toggle between Work and Personal to keep things organized

Context toggle

When you're done, tap Save Capture or press Ctrl+Enter (⌘+Enter on Mac). The form clears after saving so you can fire off another note right away.

Sharing from Other Apps

If you install Sylva as a Progressive Web App (PWA), it registers as a share target with your operating system. That means you can share content to Sylva from any app or browser that supports the OS share sheet — articles, links, images, PDFs, or plain text files.

  1. In any app, tap the Share button (or use the browser share menu)
  2. Select Sylva from the share sheet
  3. Sylva opens a share page pre-filled with the title, text, URL, or file you shared

From the share page you have two options:

  • Save the content as a new capture
  • Ask Sylva About This — sends the shared content straight into a chat with Sylva's AI so you can ask questions, summarize, or extract action items from it

Share page with Ask Sylva About This

This is especially useful on mobile when you come across an article or message and want Sylva to process it without switching back and forth between apps.

Intake System

For automated capture at scale, Sylva provides an Intake System with three integration channels. Configure all of them from Settings > Integrations.

Intake System settings

  • Email intake address — Sylva gives you a unique email address. Forward any email to it and the message content, subject, and attachments are captured automatically. Great for forwarding receipts, confirmations, or newsletters you want Sylva to remember.
  • API key — Generate a key to push data into Sylva from external tools, scripts, or automations (see REST endpoint below).
  • GitHub webhook — Add Sylva's webhook URL to any GitHub repository. Sylva captures events like pull request activity, issue updates, and comments so your development context stays connected to everything else.

REST Endpoint

Use Sylva's REST API to push captures programmatically. This is useful for custom integrations, cron jobs, or piping output from other tools into your Sylva account.

Send a POST request to /api/captures with your API key:

bash curl -X POST https://app.sylva.ai/api/captures
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
-H "Content-Type: application/json"
-d '{ "captures": [ { "source": "web", "title": "Quarterly planning notes", "content": "Key decisions from today: launch date is March 15, budget approved for contractor support.", "source_url": "https://example.com/notes", "context": "work", "captured_at": "2025-01-15T10:30:00Z" } ] }'

The captures array accepts multiple items in a single request. Each capture supports these fields:

  • source — where the content came from (see Capture Sources below)
  • title — optional label
  • content — the body text (required)
  • source_url — optional link back to the original
  • context — "work" or "personal"
  • captured_at — ISO 8601 timestamp

You can batch multiple captures in one call, which is helpful when syncing from an external system.

Capture Sources

Every capture in Sylva is tagged with a source so you can filter and trace where information came from:

  • manual — created on the Quick Capture page
  • share — sent via the OS share sheet / Web Share Target
  • email — forwarded to your Sylva intake address
  • slack — captured from Slack via the Chrome Extension
  • outlook — captured from Outlook via the Chrome Extension
  • web — captured from a webpage via the Chrome Extension or the REST API
  • github — received through a GitHub webhook

Sylva's AI uses these source tags when building context — for example, when summarizing your week, it distinguishes between what came from meetings, what came from Slack, and what you noted manually.

Was this helpful?