OpenStation vs KeepInMind Dashboard Notes

wp-admin forgets. OpenStation doesn’t. You know the moment. You’re deep in a post and you need one image from the Media Library. You click over, find it, click back, and everything you had going is gone. Your scroll position, your half-typed thought, the three other things you had queued up in your head. That’s not a bug you hit. That’s the design. wp-admin shows you one screen at a time, and every navigation throws the last one away. It has worked this way since 2003, like a fridge that empties itself every time you close the door. WordPress has rebuilt almost everything else. The editor, the site editor, the patterns, the styles. The admin’s one-screen-at-a-time model is the layer nobody touched. OpenStation touches it. Install it and admin screens become draggable, resizable windows. Edit a post while the Media Library sits open next to it. Drag an image from one window straight into the other. Keep comments open in the corner. Reload the browser and your window layout — open pages, positions, sizes, and window states — comes back where you left it. OpenStation itself is free, GPL, and opt-in per user. One click in the admin bar turns it on for you. One click turns it off. Nobody else on your site sees anything change, and deactivating the plugin restores the classic admin exactly. No Core patches and no lock-in. Optional AI providers may charge for their service. Built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Work on more than one thing at once Admin pages open as windows, including pages added by most other plugins. Drag them, resize them, snap them, tile them, minimize them to a taskbar. The admin menu becomes a dock of icons. Two editors open at once is one click away. Never lose your place Moving between open windows leaves each page in place. Across reloads, OpenStation remembers your open pages, window positions, sizes and states, virtual desktops, and focus. Closing a window with unsaved changes warns you first. A desk you can actually put things on Drop posts, media, and links right onto the wallpaper. Sort them into folders. Trash them to a Trash that actually holds things. The stuff you’re working on this week can just sit out where you can see it. One desktop per job Virtual desktops, the way your operating system does them. One for writing. One for the store. One for comment triage. One for that redesign you keep poking at. Switch between them without closing anything. Find anything with Cmd+K The full WordPress command palette, plus slash commands from your plugins, all under one keystroke. Turn on the optional AI assistant and you can ask it things like “which post had the comment asking for the recipe?” and it searches your own content to answer. (Requires an AI provider configured in Settings → Connectors on WordPress 7.0+. Details under “External services” below.) See how your site fits together The Corkboard is an interactive, zoomable map of how your posts, pages, and products link to each other. Pan around it. Find the orphans. Find the hubs. Running a store? Orders, Products, Coupons, and Customers become browsable folders with stock and sale ribbons. Open a customer to see their lifetime spend and what they buy most. Follow a product to its buyers, or a coupon to who redeemed it. Make it yours Wallpapers, from color presets to animated scenes to your own photo. Live widgets pinned to the desktop: drafts, stats, recent comments, a focus timer. Uploadable desktop themes, including a built-in Legacy theme that brings the old WordPress blue back in one click. And Mio, a soft-body desk companion that drifts across your wallpaper and gets bumped around by your windows. Off by default. You’ll turn it on. For developers Extend OpenStation through documented PHP and JavaScript APIs. Register windows, icons, wallpapers, widgets, commands, and settings tabs through stable openstation_register_* PHP APIs and a typed JavaScript API; customize dock items through documented hooks; add AI tools with the WordPress Abilities API. Copy-paste examples live in the developer docs on GitHub. External services No external service is required for OpenStation’s desktop interface. The optional AI Assistant and two user-initiated enrichment features make the external requests described below. AI Assistant The optional AI Assistant sends data to the AI provider you configure in WordPress’s Settings → Connectors (for example OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). Generation is routed through WordPress 7.0’s built-in AI Client, which supplies the credentials stored in Connectors. The plugin never handles an API key itself. With no provider configured in Connectors, no external AI requests are made. When the AI Assistant is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette): What is sent: the user’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, and tool-call metadata. The plugin’s built-in tools (search_posts, search_pages, search_comments) run WordPress’s native keyword search and may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to the provider as part of the agentic loop. When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if an administrator enables “Score new comments with AI”) on comment-save hooks for spam analysis. Posts, pages, and taxonomy terms are not sent automatically. Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Assistant. Who provides the service: whichever provider you configured in Settings → Connectors. Which provider (and endpoint) receives the data depends entirely on that configuration. Review the chosen provider’s own terms and privacy policy (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). URL shortcut favicons When an authorized user creates a desktop shortcut to an external URL, OpenStation asks that URL for its page HTML and favicon so the shortcut can display the site’s icon. The request is made from your WordPress server and sends the requested URL, the server’s IP address, an OpenStation user-agent string, and normal HTTP request metadata to the operator of that site. This happens only when a user creates the shortcut. The destination site’s terms and privacy policy apply. WordPress.org plugin information When an authorized user opens or refreshes parts of OpenStation’s Plugins window, OpenStation may request public plugin details, update metadata, and review excerpts from WordPress.org. These requests send plugin slugs, the site’s locale, and normal HTTP request metadata to WordPress.org. This information is used only to display and manage plugins. Review the WordPress.org Privacy Policy. OpenStation’s OAuth relay does not contact a service by itself. Third-party plugins that configure the relay may contact their own providers and are responsible for disclosing those services. Credits OpenStation is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub. Third-party libraries The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use: PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the Corkboard window, built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo), the Mio desk companion, and the Inkfall typing game. PixiJS is loaded from the plugin’s own assets/vendor/ directory; no CDN requests are made. Data files The Inkfall game’s word list (assets/games/inkfall/words.txt) is generated from the following sources (attribution also ships in the file’s header): FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC-BY-SA 4.0) — English word-frequency ranking derived from the OpenSubtitles corpus. english-words by dwyl (Unlicense) — used as a validity filter. LDNOOBW English list (CC-BY 4.0) — used as an exclusion filter.

KeepInMind Dashboard Notes turns your WordPress dashboard into a collaborative workspace. Place notes directly on any admin page – anchored to the exact element you’re talking about. No more Slack messages, emails, or random chats saying “that field on the product edit page” – just click, write your note, and your team sees it right where it matters. Why KeepInMind Dashboard Notes? Whether you’re working in a team or managing a site on your own, the same problem keeps coming up: how to keep track of decisions in the dashboard. Which settings need to change? What does this custom field do? Why is this item configured this way? KeepInMind Dashboard Notes solves this by letting you pin notes directly to dashboard elements – for your team, or for your future self. Here are just a few real-world scenarios where it shines: You temporarily disable a plugin to test whether it’s causing a conflict. Drop a Warning note on the Plugins page so everyone knows it was turned off on purpose – and so you remember to check back in three weeks. You installed a plugin for one very specific reason that isn’t obvious. Pin a note to it explaining why it’s there, so another admin – or future you – doesn’t delete it thinking it’s unused. A client keeps changing a setting that breaks their site. Attach an always-visible Alert banner right next to that toggle: “Do not change – this controls the checkout redirect.” Your developer configured a custom field with a non-obvious format. Leave a note on the field itself explaining what values are expected, so the content team doesn’t have to guess. You’re onboarding a new team member. Instead of writing a separate training doc, scatter helpful Attention banners across the pages they’ll use most – guidance that shows up exactly where they need it. You’re running a staging review before launch. Pin notes to every area that needs a final check, and let your team reply with updates as they work through the list. Key Features Pin Notes Anywhere Click any element on any admin page to leave a note. Your note stays anchored to that exact element – a form field, a menu item, a settings toggle, a table row. When your teammate visits the page, they see the note marker right where it belongs. Rich Text Editing Format your notes with bold text, links, and text colors. The floating toolbar appears on text selection. Three Note Types: Pinned Note – Appears as a marker on the page. Click to open and manage a threaded discussion. Open Note – Always visible inline. Choose a color to highlight the note based on its importance. Sticky Note – Bold square note that sticks in place for highly visible reminders and warnings. @Mention Teammates Type @ to mention any allowed user. They’ll receive an email notification with your note. Autocomplete helps you find the right person fast – just keep typing to filter. Private notes Mark any note as private so only you can see it. Perfect for personal reminders and work-in-progress notes. Threaded Replies Pinned notes support full threaded replies. Keep conversations organized and contextual without cluttering the page. Drag & Relocate Notes can be dragged to a new element if the page layout changes. Grab the drag grip and drop it on the right spot – all replies move with it. Note Scoping On entity pages (posts, terms, users), choose whether your note applies to this specific item or all items of this type. For example, a note on the “Blue T-Shirt” edit page can be scoped just to that product – or to the edit page of all products. Configurable Permissions Control exactly who can add notes and who can edit or delete: Role-based access – Choose which roles can use the plugin (Administrator is always included). User-level access – Whitelist specific users regardless of role. Edit/Delete/Relocate policies – Author only, role hierarchy (strict or relaxed), or everybody.