A bookmark bar holds four kinds of thing and only one of them is a picture. This is a local-first reference library built on that observation: right-click any image in the browser and it lands in a board with its source, its dimensions and its colour palette recorded, alongside the archives, pages and tools that are the other three kinds. A reference belongs to any number of boards, because being made to choose at capture time is how a reference ends up somewhere you never look again.
ResultIn use locally.
[ Ask about this build ]01Develop
What it took
Skills behind it.
Primary discipline plus the support stack.
Skills demonstrated
- Product StrategyPrimary
Started from what a bookmark bar actually holds rather than from what an image library usually models, which is why archives, pages and tools are first-class kinds instead of pictures with the wrong metadata attached.
- Backend EngineeringSecondary
Made the vault on disk the source of truth and the database a derived index, content-addressed, so deleting the database and reindexing is routine rather than a disaster-recovery path.
- Frontend EngineeringSecondary
Built the capture path so that saving a reference is one right-click in the browser, and the source URL, dimensions and colour palette are recorded at that moment rather than asked for later.
- Creative DirectionSupporting
The tool exists to serve a working visual practice, so it is organised around how references get used when designing rather than around how files get stored.
02Deliver
What shipped.
In use locally. The architectural call is that disk is the truth and SQLite is only an index: every reference is a file and a sidecar JSON inside the Obsidian vault, boards are generated markdown readable in Obsidian with the images embedded, and the database is derived from those sidecars and safe to delete at any time. Rebuilding it is a normal operation rather than a recovery story, which means the library outlives the app that reads it.
By the numbers
Reference kinds
image, archive, page and tool, not just pictures
Boards per reference
filing it once does not remove it from anywhere else