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Cleft sends notes straight into Drafts. Open a note, choose Send → Send to Drafts, and the whole note lands in your Drafts inbox.

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Send to Drafts

Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac in Cleft v1.15.0 or later. Send to Drafts appears in the Send menu only when Drafts is installed. What gets sent:
  • The whole note. The summary comes first, then the transcript under a ## Transcript heading, whichever tab you have open in Cleft.
  • Your title as a heading. A note with a title gets it as a Markdown H1 above the body.
  • Your tags, as real Drafts tags. They arrive as native tags, not inline text. Blank tags are dropped, and tags that differ only by capitalization or accents are collapsed into one.
What it does not do: pick a folder, run a Drafts action, attach the audio or the note’s attachments, or sync in both directions. It is a one-way handoff, so later edits in Cleft do not update the draft.
An empty note will not send. If Drafts is missing or refuses to open, Cleft tells you and leaves the note untouched.

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Alternative: Local Export

If you prefer a file-based archive (for example, to keep .md files alongside an Obsidian vault or NotePlan folder that Drafts can occasionally pull from), Local Export is free on Mac, iPhone, and iPad and auto-exports every note as a .md file. Cleft Plus lets you point exports at a Drafts-adjacent folder instead of Cleft’s own Cleft Notes folder. Drafts has no Properties panel, so any frontmatter shows up as text at the top of a draft. Choose the Drafts starting point in Customize the frontmatter to keep only the three fields Cleft needs and move the transcript into the body. A note exported that way looks like this:
In Drafts, this renders as:
  • Body containing the full file: the short frontmatter block as visible text at the top, then the AI summary, the transcript, and the inline hashtags
  • Tag pane picks up #work and #ideas from the inline hashtags, clickable for filtering
  • Drafts library does not auto-import the file. You have to drag-drop it in or run an Action that reads the folder
This is one-way sync: Cleft → folder. Edits you make to the .md file are overwritten on the next Cleft sync of that note.

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Drafts-specific tips

  • Tags: Inline #tag syntax at the end of the body is clickable in Drafts’ tag panel. Multi-word tags become #multi-word and slashed tags like #work/meetings are preserved.
  • Frontmatter as body content: Drafts has no Properties UI, so the YAML block appears at the top of the draft as visible text. The Drafts frontmatter starting point keeps that block to three lines. Use Send → Send to Drafts instead if you want no frontmatter at all.
  • Drag-drop import: Drafts doesn’t watch folders by default. To pull a .md file into Drafts, drag-drop it onto the Drafts window or use a custom Drafts Action that reads from your Local Export folder.
Do not point Local Export at iCloud Drive/Drafts/Inbox. Drafts imports whatever it finds there, and Cleft mirrors later edits back to the folder, so the same note can arrive as a draft more than once. Use Send → Send to Drafts for the inbox and keep Local Export pointed at an archive folder.

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Limitations

  • Not folder-watched. Drafts stores notes in its own database, so .md files written by Local Export won’t appear in Drafts automatically. You’ll need to import them manually or via a Drafts Action.
  • No frontmatter rendering. YAML keys like title, tags, cleft_ref (or cleft_id in older files) show up as text, not structured fields.
  • No bidirectional sync. Neither Send to Drafts nor Local Export brings your Drafts edits back to Cleft. If Local Export is writing to the same .md, your Drafts edits to that file get overwritten.

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Which path to use

Last modified on September 27, 2026