Two Tools, One Brain: Why I Pay for Both Fabric and Eden
Hey Reader,
This one’s been sitting in my drafts for a while, not because I didn’t know what to write, but because I wanted to actually live with both tools long enough to say something honest.
I’ve been burned before — excited about a new app, wrote it up, then quietly stopped using it three months later. Didn’t want to do that to you.
So here’s what I actually think, after paying for both and using them daily across work, personal projects, and everything in between.
First, the context
Twenty years in industrial sales means I manage a lot. Quotes, specs, client histories, follow-up threads, product documentation, territory notes — the kind of information sprawl that breaks most productivity systems within a month.
I’ve tried nearly everything. The single-app dream always collapses in the same place: the tool that’s great at capturing is never great at creating, and the tool that’s great at deep work can’t keep up with you when you’re in the field.
What I eventually realized is that I wasn’t looking for one tool. I was looking for two tools that knew their lane.
Fabric and Eden, as it turns out, know their lanes.
The honest framing before I get into either tool
Fabric is my resource layer. Eden is my thinking layer.
Everything — work files, personal documents, saved articles, voice memos, client notes — goes into Fabric. It’s my catch-all. Always on, always searchable, always with me.
Eden is where I go to actually produce something. Writing, research, brainstorming, building out a framework. Nothing casual lives there. It’s a workspace I deliberately enter, not a drawer I throw things into.
That split took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out. Once I did, both tools started working properly.
Fabric: The resource layer that actually keeps up
I’ve been using Fabric long enough to remember when it was rougher around the edges. It’s matured significantly. The self-organizing engine means I spend almost no time manually filing — things land, get tagged, become findable. That alone is worth the subscription.
But the part that’s changed my day-to-day most is the AI. It lives alongside my content, not in a separate window I have to switch to. The Fabric Agent can move files, add tags, create notes, run a web search — it operates inside the system rather than sitting on top of it. And Fabric Memory means it’s actually learning over time. It recalls things I didn’t think to look for. That’s gotten useful in ways that are hard to explain until you’ve experienced it.
The other thing I’ll say plainly: the mobile apps are real and they work. iOS and Android, full functionality. My resource layer has to be with me in the field, in the car, between meetings. Fabric passes that test without complaint.
Where it doesn’t excel: It’s not built for the kind of deep, multi-format work session where you need a whiteboard, a draft, and three reference documents open without losing your thread. That’s not a flaw — it’s just not what it’s for.
Eden: The thinking layer built for flow
Eden is newer, still in private beta, and it’s making a bet I think is correct: that the biggest drain on creative and strategic work isn’t disorganization — it’s constant context-switching.
The multi-pane interface sounds like a small thing until you use it. Having your research, your draft, and your brainstorm canvas open simultaneously in one window — without tab-hopping, without losing your place — changes the texture of a work session. I didn’t realize how much mental energy I was spending just relocating myself between tools until I stopped having to do it.
The whiteboard being native rather than a separate app is the other big one for me. I think visually before I write linearly. Having that flow — sketch out the structure, then write into it — in a single workspace has cut the time between “thinking about writing this” and “actually writing this” by more than I expected.
Projects are Eden’s sharpest feature. Your general workspace holds everything, but a project is a curated slice — only the content relevant to this piece of work. The AI operates within that scope. It’s not wading through your entire knowledge base when you ask it something specific. That focus shows.
One more thing that matters: the AI is agentic and undoable. It takes action — creates files, organizes folders, runs searches — and if it gets something wrong, you can undo it. That “undo” sounds minor. It’s actually the thing that makes me willing to let it act at all.
The real limitation: Web only, right now. I don’t send Eden out into the field with me because I can’t. It’s a desk tool. For deep work sessions, that’s fine. For capture on the go, it’s not in the running.
How the two actually work together day-to-day
In practice, the split is clean:
Into Fabric: everything I want to keep. Work documents, client notes, voice memos from the car, research I might need later, meeting notes. If I’m capturing something, it goes to Fabric. The mobile apps make this feel effortless.
Into Eden: active projects only. When I sit down to write, build out a framework, or do serious research — I open Eden, load the relevant project, and stay there. The whiteboard is where the thinking starts. The multi-pane view is where it develops. The draft is where it lands.
No duplication, no confusion. Fabric is input. Eden is output. The two don’t step on each other because they’re not trying to do the same job.
Which one should you actually try?
Start with Fabric if you need something working today across all your devices and your information is currently scattered across too many places to find anything reliably. It’s the more mature product and the mobile apps are essential.
Get on Eden’s waitlist if you do serious desk-based creative or strategic work and context-switching is genuinely costing you time and focus. It’s worth the wait.
Run both if you want a capture system that’s always available and a creative workspace that’s actually built for depth. There’s no overlap to manage — just two tools, two jobs.
Disclosure: I’m a Fabric affiliate. I was a paying customer before I was an affiliate, and that hasn’t changed. The opinions here are my own.
The full write-up with the side-by-side breakdown is on Medium if you want the complete comparison.
Until next week —
Kaushik—SystemsAndFlow