It's paper that
thinks with you.

Write notes the way you actually think. Then turn the same words through commonplaces, indexes, threads, memory routes, axioms, and diaries.

download the app see the modes
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Beauty: a form of knowledge that resists reduction to information. Ae
Memory: the commonplace book as a machine for the self. Io
Reading: a performative act, not mere reception. Ou
Thinking: shouldering intellectual and moral responsibility. Ai
Erasmus Topics gather when a short phrase before a colon becomes a heading inside the text.
paperweight. gather

For words that feel their way to a thought

Most notes apps ask you to decide the system before you have the thought. Paperweight lets you write first.

When you come back, modes give those notes a different shape: a heading, an index mark, a sequence, a route, a number, a date.

The point is not to capture more. It is to make your own words easier to return to, rearrange, and think with.

Choose the shape your notes need.

The same notes can become topics, indexes, threads, routes, axioms, or diary entries.

Erasmus

Turn compact phrases into headings as you write, so themes can gather without a filing system.

Beauty:

Locke

Give each note a short index mark, then find a thought without remembering where you placed it.

Ae

Luhmann

Read connected thoughts as threads, with meaning carried by relation rather than container.

< >

Simonides

Place notes along a memory route, so order can be walked instead of searched.

foyer

Vico

Number thoughts as propositions in a larger argument you do not yet fully know.

4.

Woolf

Let dated entries accumulate as a continuous diary of attention.

15 Jan

Where it began

From commonplacing to a native Apple-platform writing surface.

Born out of years of study at Stanford, Paperweight takes inspiration from commonplace books, notebooks, indexes, memory palaces, diaries, and slips: old forms for giving words enough structure to think.

The weight of paper is small but not trivial. It keeps a page available. Paperweight does the same for text: it holds notes where they can be read, revised, sequenced, and found again.

Paperweight is a sanctuary for finding yourself in your own words.

Library

Books behind the way Paperweight thinks about notes.

Graphesis by Johanna Drucker book cover Graphesis / Johanna Drucker The Study by Andrew Hui book cover The Study / Andrew Hui Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte book cover Building a Second Brain / Tiago Forte The Notebooks by Leonardo da Vinci book cover The Notebooks / Leonardo da Vinci

For notes that keep becoming useful.

Paperweight is for the moment after capture, when a line needs to be found, placed, connected, or returned to.

write without changing format

Your notes stay plain text, readable anywhere, with structure added as a layer around the words.

find structure after writing

Topics, index marks, dates, routes, and threads help patterns appear without asking you to plan the system first.

return without starting over

Come back to the same material through a different mode and see what was hidden in it.

Give your notes a place to think.

Download Paperweight and write with commonplaces, indexes, memory routes, threads, axioms, and diaries.

download the app