Planning a family vacation usually means flight prices in one browser tab, a hotel shortlist in another, and everyone's must-sees scattered across a group chat. A mind map is one of the easiest ways to pull all of that into one view: the trip goes in the middle, and everything else branches out from it.
Xmind has made mind-mapping software since 2006 and says more than 100 million people use it. The company has now added Xmind Agent, an AI helper that builds and develops maps with you.
How it works
You can start Xmind Agent with a rough idea, a document or a Notion page, and it turns that material into a mind map, with related points grouped together and the links between them easy to follow. You can also open a map you made earlier and ask the agent to keep building on it. It can look things up on the web, compare options and answer follow-up questions, so the map keeps changing as you work things out.
To change the map, you type what you want in ordinary sentences, like "add a section for the budget" or "this is too cluttered, simplify it." There are no commands to learn, and you can still drag things around yourself. Your conversations sync between your phone and computer, so you can start planning at your desk and finish on the couch.
Who it's for
Xmind Agent is most useful when you're juggling a lot of information. A student can turn a semester of notes into a study guide. A family can keep track of a move or a big event. Someone weighing two job offers can see the strengths and limitations of each side by side instead of in a pros-and-cons list buried in a notes app.
It works with ChatGPT and Claude
If you do research in an AI chatbot, you've probably lost something useful in a long conversation. Xmind now has a ChatGPT plugin, and assistants such as Claude can connect through Xmind MCP, a standard way for AI assistants to work with other apps. Both are available now.
That means you can ask ChatGPT or Claude to save what you've been researching as an Xmind map you can come back to. You can also share a map with your assistant so it understands your plan before it helps with the next step. If the assistant adds something you don't want, you can restore an earlier version of the map.
What it costs
Xmind Agent is included on every Xmind plan and uses AI credits. Free and Pro users get 50 credits as a one-time allowance, and Premium subscribers get 500 credits every month. Xmind says a task uses anywhere from a few to several dozen credits, depending on how complex it is, so free users should try it on a real project rather than spend credits on experiments.
When you can get it
Xmind Agent is available now in the web, desktop and Android apps, and the iOS version is coming soon.
If you're thinking about Apple's first foldable phone, Xmind has also released a version designed for iPhone Duo. It can show your outline on one half of the screen and the map on the other. Earlier this month, Xmind's team met Apple Executive Chairman Tim Cook in Guangzhou and showed him how they use a mind map to plan where to eat in the city.
"As AI becomes more capable, human judgment matters more than ever," said Mango Du, Xmind's co-founder.
Learn more at xmind.com.
