Shelf for designers
Your design references are part of your memory.
Every designer has a graveyard of things they were sure they'd need later. Screenshots. Websites. Typography. Interfaces. Campaigns. Images. Ideas.
Six months later, you can picture the thing. You just can't find it. Shelf is built for that moment.
The graveyard
You saved it because it mattered.
Designers collect faster than they organize. A screenshot between meetings. A site found at midnight. A type treatment you might use someday. An interface that solved something unusually well. A campaign someone sent you.
Saving isn't the problem. Finding it when the memory becomes useful again is.
- A folder called references, then references 2
- Screenshots named Screenshot 2024-08-14 at 23.41.02
- Bookmarks you have never once reopened
- A moodboard from a project that ended
Start from the feeling. End at the file.
You rarely remember the filename. You remember what it looked like, roughly when you saved it, and what you were working on at the time.
Those are the things Shelf indexes: what's visible in the image, the text inside it, the colour, the time, and the project it belonged to.
What you remember
Dark interface. Orange numbers. Some kind of finance product.
Clues Shelf can use
- Visual characteristics: dark interface, one warm accent
- Text read inside the screenshot: “Balance”, “Transactions”
- Context: kept during payments research
- Visual similarity
- A dark interface with a single warm accent.
- Text inside the screenshot
- Reads “Balance” and “Transactions”.
- Related project
- Kept while you were on payments research.
Kept nearby
- Orange checkout flow · Same research week
- Sparse chart styling · Same visual family
Remember what it looked like.
Design memory is often visual before it is verbal. You remember the colour, the layout, the typography, the composition, the interface.
Shelf makes those clues usable again.
Near-black surface with one warm orange accent.
The reference wasn't alone.
That screenshot belonged to research. The research belonged to a project. The project led to other references. Those references changed the direction.
Shelf keeps the surrounding memory discoverable.
- 01 · ReferenceDark fintech dashboardThe one you remembered
- 02 · ProjectPayments researchWhat it was kept for
- 03 · ResearchTwelve competitor screensKept the same week
- 04 · RelatedOrange checkout flowSame visual family
- 05 · Idea“Warmth makes numbers less hostile”Your note, later
Good references shouldn't expire.
Something you saved a year ago can become exactly the thing you need today.
Shelf helps a forgotten reference surface again when it connects to what you're working on now.
- Kept from a packaging site
- Never opened since
- Cream, deep green, warm neutrals
- Two references already kept
A memory for the work around the work.
The same library answers a different question depending on the week.
Design research
Find references later by what you remember about them. See how
Competitive research
Keep visual evidence from the products you study. See how
Creative direction
Reconnect the references that shaped an idea. See how
Brand research
Keep typography, imagery and campaigns close to their context. See how
Product design
Remember interfaces, patterns and flows across projects. See how
What's doing the remembering.
- 01Visual memoryShelf reads what's inside an image, on your Mac.
- 02Visual searchFind a screenshot by what it looked like.
- 03Semantic searchDescribe the meaning, not the filename.
- 04Contextual searchSearch with the project, app and time around it.
- 05Memory graphReferences that belong together stay together.
- 06RediscoveryOlder references return when they fit again.
Your reference library says what you're making next.
A designer's saved work is a plan in disguise: the client you're pitching, the rebrand you haven't announced, the product still under NDA.
Shelf's memory runs locally on your Mac. Saving, reading images and text, indexing and search happen on your machine, not on a server. Features that call an external model are optional, marked as such, and off unless you turn them on.
Taste is partly what you remember.
The things you keep shape the things you make.
Shelf helps you keep them close enough to matter.
Build a memory of your taste.
Keep the references worth remembering. Shelf helps you find them when they matter again.
Next thought
A reference is easier to find once Shelf already knows what it looks like.
How Shelf reads what you keepKeep exploring
Shelf V3 is out now
Shelf V3 is the current build. Shelf does not use automatic updates, so download the latest build here and install it over your current version.
This is intentional. Shelf is built around a local-first, privacy-focused philosophy. An automatic updater requires additional background processes, network connections, update infrastructure, and another system with permission to modify the app. We prefer to keep Shelf’s network footprint and background activity as small as possible.
Manual updates keep the process explicit: Shelf only checks the internet when a feature actually needs it, and you decide when a new version is downloaded and installed.