On the notes
How the stacking works
When you click a link, the note it points to opens as a new column immediately to the right — instead of replacing the page you were reading. You are reading this note in exactly that way right now.
Keep following links and the columns pile up side by side, oldest on the left. Scroll the canvas left and the notes you came from collapse into slim spines along the edge, each showing its title turned on its side. Click a spine, or scroll back, and it opens up again. Nothing you opened is ever lost — it is just tucked away a little.
Why bother
Reading online is usually a series of replacements: every click throws away the last thing you were looking at. But thinking is rarely linear — you want to hold a claim and its source in view at the same time. Keeping the trail visible lets you do that. It is sometimes described as “Miller columns for prose.”
Things worth knowing
- The address bar always reflects the full stack, so any trail you build is a link you can copy and share.
- Your browser’s back button walks back through the stack, one note at a time.
- The
×on a note closes it and everything opened after it. - On a phone, notes become full-width cards you swipe between — same idea, one at a time.
The concept comes straight from Andy Matuschak’s notes. This is a small, dependency-free take on it. The colophon has the details.