BUILDING

MARGINS

An e-reader, a whiteboard and a notebook that share one library. The reading and the thinking that comes out of it, kept in the same place.

walden.epubspace p for commands

journal/reference/walden.epubreading-notes.mdclippings.canvasessay-draft.md

Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.

the whole book in two words

# Reading notes- [[walden]] on deliberate living- pull the quote into [[essay-draft]]- sketch the cabin economy

Read

A note stays beside the passage that caused it.

EPUBs and PDFs in a reader built for long sessions, with margins wide enough to actually write in. Highlight a passage and the note lives where the thought happened, and on disk as plain markdown you own.

Every annotation is a plain markdown file. You can open it without Margins.

Draw

Thinking lives next to its source.

An infinite whiteboard for the thinking that will not fit on a page. Clip a passage from the book, drop it on the canvas, and sketch around it. Boards are JSON Canvas files, the same open format Obsidian reads.

No shape tools, on purpose. It behaves like a sketchbook, not a diagram editor.

Write

Ink beside a page belongs to that page.

Notebooks hold pages, clippings and diagrams together. Write in the margin of a page and the ink travels with it, however far the notebook grows.

The margin note that page apps and canvas apps each miss.

Everywhere

Desktop and mobile, one library.

Read on the couch, mark it up, pick the thought back up at the desk. Sync is self-hosted: your server, your files, and the server is a transport, not a second copy of the truth.

Phones are for reading and capture. The deep work stays at the desk, by design.

Fast

Keyboard-first, and instant.

Cold start to an editable buffer in under a second. Split panes, fuzzy file open, a command palette that shows its bindings. Every action is reachable from the keyboard; the mouse is a choice, not a requirement.

Modal editing for the hands that want it. Familiar editing for everyone else.

One tool, or a pile of them.

Every rival owns a piece of the loop. Margins keeps the reading, the drawing and the writing in one library. Where it is not there yet, the table says so.

Capability	Margins	Obsidian	Heptabase	MarginNote	Readwise Reader
EPUB and PDF reading with margin notes	✓	–	–	✓	–
An infinite canvas for ink and clippings	✓	–	✓	–	×
Notebook pages with ink in the margin	Soon	×	×	×	×
Plain files in your folder, readable without the app	✓	✓	×	×	×
Self-hosted sync	✓	–	×	×	×
Modal, keyboard-first editing	✓	–	×	×	×
Desktop and mobile, one library	Soon	✓	✓	–	✓

Marked from each product's public documentation and our own use, August 2026. Tell us where we are wrong.

Where it stands.

Margins is being built in the open, daily-driven by its author. No dates; the waitlist hears first.

Working today

Reader, EPUB and PDF

Editor and shell

Whiteboards

Desktop sync

In flight

Notebook pages

Phone and tablet sync

Board chrome rework

Then

First builds to the waitlist

Docs with the app

Notes from the margins

Files first

Margins keeps everything as plain files in one folder. Notes are markdown, boards are JSON Canvas, and every highlight lives beside its book as a file you can open with anything. The app reads and writes those files directly, so your notes stay readable without Margins, and your library will outlive our software. That is the point.

For the reading you keep.

First builds go to the waitlist, and the waitlist hears everything first.

Signups open closer to release. Margins is still being built.

Built for late nights.