Shelf for founders
Remember the research behind your decisions.
A founder's memory is full of fragments. A competitor screenshot. A customer quote. A market report. A product idea. A strange company you found six months ago. A note that changed your mind.
The decision gets made. The context disappears. Shelf helps you keep it.
- SignalThree customers asked for the same thingSupport screenshots, one week
- Customer“We only need the import part”Quote from a call
- CompetitorTheir onboarding skips setup entirelySix screenshots
- ResearchMarket note on narrow toolsSaved from an essay
- IdeaShip the import, not the platformWritten at 1am
- NoteThe objection you couldn't answerKept anyway
Everything above led here
Narrow the first release to import, and say no to the workspace.
The problem
You remember deciding. You don't always remember why.
Startups move too quickly to document every thought. Research happens between calls. Competitors change. Ideas arrive while you're doing something else.
Shelf gives the things behind a decision somewhere to stay findable, without asking you to write a memo about each one.
The anatomy of a decision you'll have to defend later.
In three months an investor, a new hire or your own doubt will ask why. The answer is rarely one document.
- 01 · ThenThe signal you noticedUsually a screenshot
- 02 · ThenThe research you did about itOften at night
- 03 · ThenThe competitor you compared againstSince redesigned
- 04 · ThenThe note that turned itThree lines
- 05 · NowThe decision, with its reasons attachedStill inspectable
Search the way you actually remember it.
Not by company name, because you've forgotten it. By what it looked like, what it was about, and roughly when you were looking.
What you remember
They skipped setup completely. Three screens, then you were in.
Clues Shelf can use
- Visual characteristics: a three-step onboarding, almost no form fields
- Text read in the screenshots: “Skip for now”
- Context: kept during competitor review
- Visual similarity
- A short onboarding flow rather than a settings screen.
- Text inside the screenshot
- “Skip for now” appears twice.
- Related project
- Kept inside the competitor review.
Kept nearby
- Their pricing page · Same session
- Your note: “setup is the churn” · Same day
Old context, new decision.
The research you did for a direction you abandoned is often the research you need when the question comes back.
- Shelved when you went sales-led
- Eleven screenshots and a note
- The same question, new numbers
- Your old objection still applies
Five things founders keep coming back to.
Market research
Keep the reading that shaped your view of the market. See how
Competitor memory
Screenshots outlive redesigns. Keep the evidence, dated. See how
Product thinking
Ideas arrive mid-task. Keep them without breaking the task. See how
Fundraising research
Investors, notes and comparables, in one findable place. See how
Customer context
Quotes and complaints, connected to what you built next. See how
Your saved context is your strategy.
What you've been reading, which competitors you screenshot, which direction you keep circling: together that's a roadmap you haven't announced.
Shelf keeps that memory on your Mac. Indexing and search are local. Optional features that call an external model are marked and off by default, so nothing about your plans leaves the machine unless you choose it.
Good judgment has a memory.
The decision matters. So does everything that helped you make it.
Remember what shaped the decision.
Keep the signals, the screenshots and the second thoughts where you can find them again.
Next thought
A decision is a set of connected things, not a single note.
How Shelf connects 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.