The margin is where the thinking happens
Marginalia is built by a small team that writes long and rereads often. We wanted the thinking to stay next to the sentence that caused it.
A note is part of the line
Every writing tool we tried kept the thinking somewhere else: a panel, a thread, a separate file that quietly drifted away from the sentence it belonged to. By the third revision nobody could say which note went with which line.
So we built the margin back into the page. A note sits beside its sentence, moves with it, and closes when the thinking is done.
The draft stays clean
The page you write is the page that exports. Notes live in their own layer, visible while you work, gone when the manuscript leaves. No comments pane to strip out, no metadata to scrub, no conversation hidden in the file.
Built for the long form
Chapters, dissertations, essays, reports: work that takes months and gets better by rereading. Marginalia keeps the history of your thinking beside the text, so the sixth draft can still see what the second draft was sure about.
What we hold to
Notes are first-class
A note belongs to the line that made it. It moves, exports and disappears with that line, never on its own schedule.
The page stays clean
What you write is what sends, unless you ask for the margins too.
Nothing shouts
No streaks, badges or confetti. The work is the point of the tool.
Your words are yours
We do not train on your drafts and we do not read them. Export any time, in formats that outlive us.
Keep the thinking with the sentence
Start a draft and leave the first margin note open. Works in the browser and on iPad. Export to PDF or plain text whenever the page has to leave the room.
Start writing