Scratchpad
A live-rendering note widget. Type # for a heading, - for a bullet, [ ] for a checkbox. No save button, no preview toggle — what you type is what it looks like.
Notes you can actually use. Built on a small rich-text editor that
recognises the markdown you'd naturally type — # for a
heading, - for a bullet, [ ] for a
checkbox — and renders them live, no preview toggle. Autosaves
after every pause. Loads instantly when you open a new tab.
kickoff with Sarah at 10 — talk about Q3 plan
follow up on the staging deploy after lunch
read the engineering blog post Mira shared
refactor the rate limiter, it's leaking
think about onboarding — maybe show fewer empty states upfront, let the dashboard fill in over time
Add it to your dashboard
Press E for edit mode, A to add, and choose Scratchpad. It lands at four-wide, three-tall — enough for a short list or a paragraph. Stretch it taller for persistent notes; widen it to eight or twelve columns if you're using it as a serious thinking surface.
Click in and start typing. There's no Save button — every change autosaves after a brief pause. Switch tabs whenever, the text is still there when you come back.
Live markdown shortcuts
Type these characters at the start of a line (or anywhere, for inline marks) and the editor rewrites them into the corresponding block / inline element. You're typing markdown but seeing the rendered result.
| Type | Becomes |
|---|---|
| # | Heading 1 |
| ## | Heading 2 |
| ### | Heading 3 |
| - | Bullet list (or * ) |
| 1. | Numbered list |
| [ ] | Task / checkbox item |
| > | Blockquote |
| ``` | Code block |
| `code` | Inline code |
| **bold** | Bold |
| *italic* | Italic |
| ~~strike~~ | Strikethrough |
Keyboard shortcuts also work — Ctrl/⌘ B for bold, Ctrl/⌘ I for italic, Ctrl/⌘ E for inline code, Ctrl/⌘ Shift Z to redo. Click a checkbox to toggle it; pressing Enter in a list item continues the list.
Settings
Enter edit mode ( E ), click the gear in the Scratchpad's title bar, or right-click the widget.
| Setting | Type | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Font family Switches the typeface of the note body. Sans for general thinking, serif for longer-form writing, mono for snippets and structured notes. | sans · serif · mono | sans |
| Font size Three step sizes, all with the same line-height multiplier so wider isn't jarring. Small fits roughly twice as much text on screen as large. | small · medium · large | small |
| Show word count Reveals a small floating | toggle | off |
Small things you might miss
- Autosave is debounced. A short timer (300ms) coalesces rapid edits into a single write. You'll never lose more than the last fraction of a second of typing.
- Legacy markdown migrates on first load. If you had a scratchpad from the old plain-text era, the editor reads its content as markdown the first time you open it and rewrites it as the equivalent rich-text. Subsequent edits save as HTML.
- Word count counts visible words. Split on whitespace, drop empties. Character count includes every keystroke, whitespace and all.
- Per-instance content. Two Scratchpads on the dashboard means two independent notes. The font / size / word-count settings are also per-instance — a serif "journal" can live beside a mono "shell one-liners" pad.
Heads up
- Free: text stays on the device. Pro cloud sync (opt-in):
text syncs too. Storage key is
scratchpad:<instanceId>in Chrome'sstorage.local. On Free, the contents never leave the device. - The editor is contenteditable. Browser quirks like paste handling and IME composition behave the same way they do in Notion, Linear, or any other modern rich-text editor. Pasting from Google Docs preserves headings + bold; pasting from a terminal preserves whitespace.
- No image support yet. The editor is text-focused — tables, images, and embeds aren't supported in v1. The whole structure stays portable as HTML.