field notes · writing about writing

Small essays on small software.

Notes on note-taking, focus, restricted networks, and the quiet case for building less. Written by the people who make ZipNotes.

featuredmanifesto· 6 min

The case for note apps that do less

Every productivity tool eventually grows a database, a board, and a wiki. We think that's the bug — not the feature.

Somewhere between 2015 and 2020, note apps stopped being note apps. They grew databases. They grew boards. They grew wikis, embeds, and "AI copilots" that summarize what you just wrote back at you. Somewhere in there, the actual note — the small, quick thought you wanted to capture before it evaporated — got harder and harder to reach.

ZipNotes is a bet that most of us don't need a workspace. We need a page. One page. One that opens in under half a second, saves itself, and follows us to whatever device we're on. That's it.

The ZipNotes team

Jun 29, 2026

read the full essay

02 / archive

Every post, so far.

field guide·Jun 22, 2026· 5 min

How to write more by owning fewer apps

A quiet argument for the one-app writing setup — and a template you can steal.

The most prolific writers we know use one editor. Not one "main" editor with a backup — one, full stop. Choosing where to write is friction; owning one place eliminates it.

Pick the plainest tool you'll tolerate. Everything else — the outlines, the drafts, the fragments — lives inside it. Search replaces folders. Titles replace tags. You'll write more the same week you switch.

IGInes G.

engineering·Jun 15, 2026· 8 min

How ZipNotes cold-starts in under 400ms

A tour of the choices that made the app feel instant on locked-down laptops.

Cold start is a budget problem. We had 400 milliseconds to go from a blank tab to a blinking cursor on a mid-range laptop with an aggressive corporate proxy in the way. That budget shaped every technical decision.

We ship a 2.4 MB bundle, defer everything not needed for the first keystroke, and pre-warm the editor with an inline skeleton so the caret is on screen before the app finishes hydrating. The result feels less like a webapp and more like a native window.

HTHiro T.

workflows·Jun 08, 2026· 4 min

Note-taking for people whose IT blocks everything

If your workplace treats Notion like a security incident, this one's for you.

Half of our earliest users found ZipNotes because their IT team blocked the app they used to love. Restrictive networks aren't a bug in your company — they're the reality for legal teams, banks, hospitals, and most public-sector work.

Small, fast, plain-text tools slip through where heavyweight SaaS gets flagged. That's not a marketing pitch; it's just what firewalls tend to allow.

DRDaniel R.

opinion·May 30, 2026· 7 min

Against second brains

Why the metaphor is a trap — and what quietly works better.

The "second brain" trend sold a lot of subscriptions and left a lot of people with beautifully organized archives they never open. The system became the hobby; the writing stopped.

A first brain is enough. Notes are for the moment of capture, not the fantasy of retrieval. Write it down, then let most of it fade — the important stuff resurfaces on its own.

MOMaya O.

03 / the mailing list

One essay a month. No pitches.

A short, thoughtful email on the first of every month. Unsubscribe with one click. Never sold, never shared.