Shelf for knowledge workers
A memory for an ordinary week.
Most of what you keep isn't a project. It's a link a colleague sent, a screenshot of a dashboard, a document you'll need on Thursday, a note you wrote in a meeting.
Nothing here is precious. All of it is annoying to lose.
- 09:14A colleague sends the updated policy pageLink
- 10:02The dashboard number you'll be asked aboutScreenshot
- 11:30Three lines from a meetingNote
- 14:45A contract draft to reviewPDF
- 16:20An article you actually want to finishLink
Thursday
“the number from that dashboard on Tuesday”
Weekly active, 18,402, saved Tuesday, 10:02
The problem
Filing costs more than it saves.
Deciding where something belongs takes longer than saving it, so most people don't. The link goes to a chat with themselves; the screenshot stays in Downloads.
Shelf removes the decision. Keep it, and find it later by describing it.
- Messages sent to yourself as storage
- Ninety tabs you're afraid to close
- Screenshots named Screenshot 2026-02-14 at 10.02
- A document you know exists somewhere
Describe it badly. Still find it.
Shelf searches what's written inside your screenshots and documents, what things mean, and when you kept them.
What you remember
A screenshot of a chart. One figure mattered.
Clues Shelf can use
- Text read in the screenshot: a metric label and a figure
- Visual characteristics: a chart with a summary number
- Time: kept on Tuesday morning
- Text inside the screenshot
- The metric and figure are readable.
- Saved around this time
- Tuesday morning matches your description.
- Related memory
- Kept just before your meeting notes.
Kept nearby
- Meeting notes, 11:30 · Same day
- Last month's dashboard · Same subject
The unremarkable habits that make it work.
Keep without deciding
No folder, no tag, no naming. Save and move on. See how
Find by description
Say what you remember, in your own words. See how
Return to what mattered
Old things resurface when they're relevant again. See how
Read later, properly
The article you kept, without the page's noise. See how
Work material shouldn't leave your machine.
Internal dashboards, contracts, policies and colleagues' messages are all things you keep without thinking. Shelf treats them accordingly.
Saving, reading and searching happen on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded to make search work, and nothing is used to train a model. Optional external-model features are marked and off by default.
Most things you keep aren't important until they are.
Keep the week.
Links, screenshots, documents and notes, findable on the day someone asks.
Keep 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.