I Reread Them with Pleasure, Marguerite Gérard

Margins.

writing together, in plain text

for letters, plans, and drafts that matter enough to keep.

I Reread Them with Pleasure,
Marguerite Gérard, 1788–1789. oil on canvas

Margins is a shared page that several people can write on at once — like the docs you know, except everything underneath is plain text you'll still be able to open in fifty years, on anything. Comments live where they've always belonged: in the margins.

margins · spring-letter.mdjm2 writing now
# a letter for spring

The garden made it through the winter, which is more than we can say for the fence.

We're planting the plum tree in March — come see it when it blooms

saved just now · plain text, yours forever
m · in the margin
say when in march — i'll bring the shovel.
j replied · just now
the 14th. deal.
fig. ii — margins — one page, two writers
I.

What it's for

Write together, live
everyone's cursor on the same page at the same time — drafts, plans, letters, minutes.
Comments stay in the margins
notes sit beside the words, where a pencil would put them — not on top of the writing.
Plain text underneath
your words aren't trapped in anyone's file format, including ours. what you write opens anywhere, forever.
II.

Why plain text matters

Most writing apps keep your words in their format, on their computers, behind their login. That's fine until the company changes its mind. Margins writes everything down as ordinary text — the same kind that has survived every computer since the seventies — so the letter you draft today will open on whatever machines look like in fifty years. The verdict: your words should outlive our software.

get margins, on github ↗back to the studio →
1 — on github the project is called magic-markdown — same work, older name
2 — open source, like everything the studio makes
↻ built by Artificial Illumination · margins · writing together, in plain textAI.