Getting started with SideNote Pro

Before you start

You need Windows 11 x64 and an AI endpoint. For a hosted provider, the quickest start is to connect OpenRouter in your browser; to use your own OpenAI key, see the OpenAI API key guide. To run a model on your own hardware, start with Ollama or LM Studio. Default local setups need no provider account or key.

SideNote Pro installs from Microsoft Store. It is self-contained: there is no separate runtime to install and no Visual Studio requirement.

First launch and the trial

1. Launch SideNote ProA first-use screen appears. Nothing has been activated and no trial has started yet.
2. Confirm to start the 30-day trialThe trial begins only after you confirm. It is authorized by the licensing service rather than issued locally, so this step needs an internet connection. The full assistant is available for the trial period.
3. Connect an AI provider, or leave it for laterA new installation goes straight on to a short Set up SideNote Pro screen, covered in the next section. Choose Not now and a short Finish AI setup note sits above the message box, with AI providers and Quick Setup to bring that screen back when you are ready.

Configuring your AI provider

There are two ways in. Quick Setup connects OpenRouter through your browser, or OpenAI with an API key, and a new installation offers it as soon as the trial starts. Manual setup in Settings covers everything else: another provider, a different model, or a second profile.

Quick Setup: sign in with OpenRouter

Connect with OpenRouter signs in through your browser and ends with an ordinary profile, the same one Add profile creates with OpenRouter chosen, with every field editable in Settings, AI providers.

Set up SideNote Pro

1. Select Connect with OpenRouterOpenRouter opens in your web browser. You need an OpenRouter account, and paid models need credits on it. Open OpenRouter credits is on the same screen.
2. Approve SideNote Pro on OpenRouterOpenRouter creates an API key for SideNote Pro, and SideNote Pro collects it on your PC. Nothing is copied or pasted. Cancelling, declining, or letting five minutes pass changes nothing.
3. Select Start using SideNoteSideNote Pro checks the key with OpenRouter before it saves anything, stores it encrypted for your Windows account, and sets up OpenRouter with GPT-6 Luna. You're ready confirms it.

Or use an OpenAI API key

Open Use an OpenAI API key instead on the same screen. It asks for one thing, a key from your own OpenAI account, and ends with an ordinary profile, the same one Add profile creates with OpenAI chosen, with every field editable in Settings, AI providers.

1. Create an OpenAI API keyCreate API key opens OpenAI's API-key page in your browser. The key comes from your own OpenAI account, and OpenAI typically shows it only once, so copy it while it is on screen. If the account has never used the API, Open OpenAI billing sits just below, because OpenAI may want billing or credit in place before it answers requests.
2. Paste it and select Connect & continueSideNote Pro checks the key with OpenAI before it saves anything. If the key is rejected or OpenAI cannot be reached, the screen stays where it is with a short explanation, and nothing is left half-configured.
3. Select Start using SideNoteYou're ready confirms the connection. The key is stored encrypted for your Windows account, and the assistant is ready for a first request.

Manual setup, for everything else

I'll set it up manually on the quick setup screen opens Settings, AI providers at the profile you will chat with, with the API key box ready for your key, and no key is asked for first. A card above the fields names the one thing to do next: add the key, select Test & Load models, then Save. Ollama and LM Studio are never asked for a key. It is also where Quick Setup sends you if your account cannot use the model it wants, rather than quietly picking another, and where you come back to change the model or add a profile later.

The guided setup is not only for the first launch. Quick Setup, at the top of Settings › AI providers, opens it whenever you want it. Where a provider is already set up, it adds a new profile and leaves your existing profiles, keys and default provider as they are, and the new one becomes your default only if you tick Use this provider by default.

Open Settings, then AI providers. Settings opens as its own window, with icon navigation on the left and the selected page on the right. Ctrl+S saves and Esc cancels.

Settings

Setup is five short steps, and choosing your provider does most of the first two for you.

1. Add a profile and choose your providerSelect Add profile, then pick from the Provider list: OpenAI, OpenRouter, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Ollama, LM Studio, or Custom OpenAI-compatible. SideNote Pro fills in the endpoint that provider normally uses, so there is nothing to copy from a documentation page.
2. Add your API key if the provider needs oneHosted providers do; local ones usually do not. The key is encrypted for your Windows account and never written into settings.json.
3. Select Test & Load modelsIt confirms SideNote Pro can reach the endpoint, and where the provider publishes a model list it fills the Model picker with it.
4. Choose a model, or type oneModel is a combo box: open the list, start typing to filter it, or enter a model ID yourself. Typing one works whether or not the list was ever loaded. A new OpenAI profile starts on gpt-6-luna, and a new OpenRouter profile on openai/gpt-6-luna.
5. Leave Context window on Auto, and saveAuto uses SideNote Pro's 128K default unless the provider reports a smaller context window for that model. Ctrl+S, or the footer action, stores everything locally and applies it.

Settings › AI providers

Settings › AI providers

Leave Reasoning effort at its starting value for now. An OpenAI or OpenRouter profile starts on None, the fast everyday setting for GPT-6 Luna, and every other provider starts on Provider default, the most compatible one. Reasoning effort explains when to change either.

Your first request

A new conversation shows Four ways to use SideNote Pro: try-it cards for asking about selected text, rewriting inline, capturing a region and asking about a folder. Each card is ticked once that workflow has worked on your PC. The ticks, and the short activity summary in the reminder near the end of the trial, stay on your PC and change nothing about your licence.

A new conversation

Or simply type into the composer and press Enter. Shift+Enter inserts a newline instead. The response streams in as it arrives, and the send button becomes a stop button while it does.

The compact picker in the composer names which provider profile and model is about to receive the request. Glance at it before sending anything sensitive; it is the fastest way to avoid sending a confidential document to a hosted provider when you meant to use a local one. The picker beside it chooses the system prompt for this conversation, and starts on your default.

The assistant window

The shortcut and the drawer

Press Ctrl+Shift+Space from any application to summon SideNote Pro. That is the default, changeable in Settings, Keyboard to any modifier combination with Space, a letter or a number.

Settings › Keyboard

With drawer mode on, which is the default for new installations, the assistant docks to the right edge of your display. Pressing Esc or closing the window retracts it into a slim leash on that edge rather than hiding it entirely; clicking the leash brings it back at the size and position you left. Full detail in the Windows AI sidebar.

Settings › General

Where your conversations go

Conversations are saved locally, on your machine, with generated titles. Ctrl+H opens history with full-text search, pinning, rename, delete and Markdown export. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account holding a copy.

History can be turned off, given a retention period, or encrypted for your Windows account in Settings, History. See managing conversations.

Settings › History

Where to go next

Try selected-text actions

Select text in any app and press Ctrl+Shift+Q: the biggest single workflow change, covered in AI actions on selected text.

Keep a note beside your work

Active Notes hold lists, snippets and project facts on your PC, to float beside your work or attach to a request.

Reply in English from your own language

Switch on inline commands, start a message in another application with /en, and press Tab: inline translation replaces it with English in the same field.

Understand model choice

Choosing the right AI model is the difference between a fast cheap assistant and a slow expensive one.

Point it at a folder

Using AI with a local folder shows how local retrieval selects excerpts for each request.

Read the privacy boundary

BYOK and privacy sets out exactly what goes where.