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AI writing tools: Review, Refactor & the selection assistant
Header has three ways to get help with a draft. Each one shows you the change before it touches the note, and each one tells you whether it ran on your Mac or went to a cloud provider.
| Tool | Use it to | Without an AI provider |
|---|---|---|
| Selection assistant | Rework a sentence or paragraph you've selected, or turn it into a table, checklist or diagram. | The Edit verbs still run, using simple built-in rules, and the instruction box builds tables, checklists, numbered steps, headings and diagrams from your selection. Understand is hidden. |
| AI Review | Get a list of suggestions for the whole note or a selection and accept them one at a time. | Needs Apple Intelligence, Ollama or a cloud key. |
| Markdown Refactor | Reshape a section into a table, checklist, decision log, meeting notes, diagram, properties, client brief or outline. | Works, using a built-in builder that only rearranges what the note says. |
Which AI runs where, and how to add a key or turn on Apple Intelligence, is in Setting up AI. Header adds no charge on top of whatever your provider charges.
The selection assistant AI
Select some text and click the sparkle on the selection toolbar. A card opens next to the selection showing how many words you picked. It has up to three parts.
Edit
Improve, Fix grammar, Simplify, Shorten and Change tone. Change tone opens Warmer; Sharper, more confident; More formal; and Plainer, less jargon.
Understand
Ask about this, Explain and Summarize. These never change your text. They open the Ask tab of the Assistant with the selection as the scope and, for Explain and Summarize, the question filled in. See Ask Header.
At the top of the card is a box that says Ask AI to edit or explain this…. Type your own instruction and press Return. If it reads like a question ("what does this clause mean?", anything ending in "?"), Header sends it to Ask instead of rewriting your text.
Some instructions ask for structure rather than wording: a table, checklist, to-do list, bullets, numbered steps, an outline, headings, frontmatter, a callout or code block, or a Mermaid diagram, chart, timeline, mind map or flowchart. For those, Header widens the selection to whole lines first, so a selection that started halfway through a bullet doesn't leave stray symbols in front of the new table.
Nothing changes until you choose. Replace swaps your text for the proposal, and ⌘Z undoes it like any other edit. Retry asks again. Discard goes back to the list of actions. When a cloud provider did the work, its name appears on the pin and a brief "Logged" stamp shows the send was recorded.
Header also checks the proposal and shows a warning above it, with the button renamed Replace anyway, when:
- links, citations, code or embedded markup changed;
- formatting or document structure changed;
- you asked for a table, checklist or diagram and didn't get one;
- a chart shows numbers your text doesn't state. Ask for a pie chart of three apps you only described and the model may give each one a third; Header flags that so made-up figures don't pass for facts.
If you edit the note while the assistant is working, the result is thrown away and nothing is applied.
Change tone currently has three underlying rewrites: Warmer uses a warmer tone, Sharper and More formal both use a professional tone, and Plainer simplifies.
Quick touch-ups and translation AI
A few more menus apply one action to the selection. Each one opens a review sheet showing the change as a diff; tick the parts you want and click Apply (the button counts them, as in Apply 2 changes). Header saves the note to History first.
- Edit → Writing Tools: Proofread Selection and Professional Tone.
- The Assist menu in the Format toolbar: Summarize, Simplify, Fix Grammar, and Tone → Professional Tone or Warmer Tone. Its Cite This Claim… item belongs to Research.
- Right-click selected text → Writing Tools: Fix Grammar, Rewrite Clearly, Shorten, Professional Tone, Warmer Tone and Summarize.
- Edit → Translate Selection (Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Simplified Chinese), or right-click → Translate (English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Japanese). Translation needs Apple Intelligence or a configured provider. Header asks the model to leave Markdown, links, citations and code alone, and throws the result away if it doesn't.
These try Apple Intelligence first when you've turned on Prefer Apple Intelligence (on-device) when available, then your provider. The writing actions fall back to the same simple built-in rules as the selection assistant.
AI Review AI
Open the note's ⋯ menu (top right of the window) and choose Review This Note…. You can also click the sparkles button in the toolbar to show the Assistant and pick its Review tab. The Assistant is one panel with three tabs: Review, Refactor and Ask.
- Set Scope to Whole note or Selection. Each shows its word or line count.
- Pick an Action. Under Review: Improve Clarity, Tighten Prose, Find Gaps and Reorganize. Under Create: Outline, Continue Draft and Custom.
- Optionally click Add guidance (optional) and write something like "keep my tone, don't touch the headings". Custom needs an instruction, and its Suggested instructions menu has starting points such as "Find unsupported claims." or "Draft a follow-up email."
- Click Review.
Suggestions arrive as a list ("Suggestion 2 of 5"), each with a title, a reason and a line count such as +3 −2. Click one to compare the original with the proposal, then:
- Accept Change applies it. Find Gaps offers Insert Finding, Outline offers Insert Outline and Continue Draft offers Accept Continuation; these add text after the passage instead of replacing it.
- Reject drops it.
- Refine lets you type a follow-up instruction for that one suggestion.
The arrows step through the list. The Batch actions menu has Accept All, Reject All, Undo and Clear suggestions. Undo puts back the note as it was before your last Accept Change or Accept All. The insert buttons count as accepting too.
If you keep writing while suggestions wait, some may no longer match. Accepting one of those shows "Suggestion no longer matches current note." and changes nothing; if the note already contains the proposed text, the suggestion is cleared as "Already up to date".
The badge at the top says where Review will run: "Apple Intelligence", "Cloud AI Ready" or "Cloud AI Off". With Apple Intelligence preferred, Review runs on your Mac first and uses your cloud provider only if it has to. Review needs Apple Intelligence, Ollama or a cloud key; without one, the panel tells you what to set up.
Markdown Refactor Works offline
Open the note's ⋯ menu → Refactor Markdown…, or the Assistant's Refactor tab.
Scope is Selection, Current section (the heading the cursor is under, down to the next heading of the same or a higher level) or Whole note. It starts on Selection if you had text selected, otherwise on Current section. A selection is widened to whole lines.
Format lists up to three Suggested formats based on what the text looks like, then All formats:
| Format | What you get |
|---|---|
| Table | A Markdown table. You set the Columns (Owner, Decision, Next Step, Due Date to start with); a value the note doesn't state is shown as —. |
| Checklist | Tasks, Follow-ups, Waiting, Blockers and Questions sections, with owners and dates only where stated. |
| Decision Log | Explicit decisions with Date, Decision, Rationale, Owner and Source. Proposals and open items go in separate sections. |
| Meeting Notes | Summary, Decisions, Action Items, Questions, Risks and Follow-ups. |
| Mermaid Flow | A Mermaid diagram. Pick the Diagram type: Flowchart, Sequence, Timeline, State diagram or Mind map. |
| Properties | YAML frontmatter using the allowed keys (title, aliases, tags, status, type, created, updated). Existing keys are kept. Choosing it sets the scope to Whole note. |
| Client Brief | Context, Key Points, Decisions, Risks, Next Steps, Open Questions and Evidence. |
| Outline | H2/H3 headings that keep your wording, open questions and tasks. |
Add instructions takes an extra constraint. More options holds the Approach (Restructure keeps the same information in a cleaner shape; Extract pulls out only supported tasks, decisions, questions or metadata, and is the default for Decision Log, Meeting Notes and Properties) and these switches: Preserve all facts, Keep wiki links and citations, Mark missing or uncertain information, Allow summarization or omission, and for diagrams and extractions Keep original text below output. Preview sent content shows exactly the text that will be processed. The label next to More options says where it runs: "Apple Intelligence · on-device", "Cloud · preview required", "Local only" and so on.
Click Preview Changes (⌘Return). Your note doesn't change at this point. Header then checks the result:
- it isn't empty and it isn't identical to the source;
- it really is a valid table, checklist, diagram, frontmatter block or outline;
- no existing frontmatter key is lost;
- every wiki link, Markdown link and citation is still there (when Keep wiki links and citations is on);
- enough of the source's words survive (unless you allowed summarization);
- vague phrases such as "soon", "TBD" or "next Monday" are flagged for you to check;
- output lines are matched, where Header can, to the source lines they came from.
If everything passes, Header goes straight to the diff. If anything needs attention, you see Original above Proposed, the Validation and change report and the Source mappings, with Back, Generate another preview and Apply selected changes. A blocking problem, such as an invalid result or lost frontmatter, links or citations, disables Apply selected changes.
In the diff, tick the changes you want and click Apply; the button counts what you ticked, as in Apply 1 change. Header saves the note to History first, so you can get the old version back from Time Travel (see The Note Inspector & history).
Apple's Writing Tools and Image Playground AI
Apple Writing Tools panel. On macOS 15 or later you can let Apple's own Writing Tools panel appear in the editor by turning on Settings → Editor → Allow Apple Writing Tools panel in the editor. It's off by default because Apple's panel replaces text without Header's review step. The setting applies to editors opened after you change it.
Insert Generated Image…. On a Mac with Image Playground (macOS 15.1 or later), select a phrase such as "a lighthouse at dusk", right-click and choose Insert Generated Image…. Apple's Image Playground opens with your selection as the starting idea. Nothing is saved until you pick an image; then Header stores it as a PNG in your attachments folder, saves the note's previous version to History, and inserts it after the selection with "Generated image (Apple Image Playground)" in its alt text.