CairnCRN-002 · SHEET 2 OF 5 · REV 3

Notes app · plain files · offline

Notes you can walk back into.

Cairn keeps your notes as markdown files in a folder on your own disk. Type [[ to cut a door between two of them and the way back is drawn on the other note for you. Ten years in, you can still find the room you left something in — and if you stop using Cairn, you keep every file.

Download Cairn — free for one vaultWalk the plan
Format
Markdown, on your disk
Network
Not required
Vault
Free · sync $8/mo
DWG CRN-002

Level 01 — vault plan

SCALE 1:50ISOMETRIC
Isometric floor plan of a Cairn vault. Seven rooms, each one a feature of the app.001DAILY4.40 × 4.40002STACKS4.20 × 5.40003PASSAGE1.80 × 9.20004ARCHIVE4.20 × 3.80005RESURFACE3.20 × 4.00006READING4.40 × 4.80007ANNEX3.20 × 5.203AA13.609.203.80THE DOOR YOU FORGOT.Notes untouched for a yearthat bear on today's page.RM 005
Point at a room, or tab into the plan, to read its redline note. The room schedule below carries the same information as text.The drawing is wider than this screen — drag it sideways to reach the east rooms.
Room schedule — CRN-002
No.RoomAreaFunction
001Daily note19.4 m2Opens the moment you launch Cairn. Today's date, an empty page, cursor already in it.
002Stacks22.7 m2Plain markdown files on your own disk. Opens with no network. Leave Cairn and you still have every file.
003Passage16.6 m2Type [[ to cut a door between two notes. The way back is drawn on the other note without you asking.
004Archive16.0 m2Every note keeps its own version history. Read any earlier draft, or put it back.
005Resurface12.8 m2Reached through a door you had forgotten. Cairn opens notes you have not touched in a year that bear on the page you are writing today.
006Reading room21.1 m2Search reads every note you have, down to the text inside scanned PDFs and images.
007Annex16.6 m2The same vault opens on your desktop and on your phone.
Section A–A

The opening between two notes

Type [[ and start naming a note. Cairn cuts the opening. It also cuts it from the other side, which is the half people forget to do by hand.

Estuary sediment coresWhy the 1854 cholera map worked[[Why the 1854 choleralink you typedbacklink, written for youOPENING 0.90 × 2.10
Detail 2 · Rev 3

The door you had forgotten

Every note-taking app can show you what you linked. Resurface opens the rooms you never linked and stopped visiting. While you write, it looks for notes you have not touched in a year that bear on the page in front of you, and puts them at the edge of it.

Today you are writing Kiln temperature curves. Cairn opens three doors:

  • Bridge deck expansion jointsnot opened in 16 monthsthermal expansion — the same arithmetic
  • Sourdough: hydration lognot opened in 2 yearsyou already designed this logging table
  • Estuary sediment coresnot opened in 14 monthsnames two of your clay sources

Nothing is filed, moved or rewritten. The doors simply open.

Detail 3 · Room 006

Search gets into the boxes

Search reads every note in the vault, and it reads the text inside scanned PDFs and images too — the interview you photographed, the paper you never retyped.

cholera3 notes · 9 matches
  • Why the 1854 cholera map workedMARKDOWN6 matches
  • Reading — Seeing Like a StateMARKDOWN2 matches
  • Interview — R. Okonjo, 12 MarSCANNED PDF1 match, page 4

The third one is a photograph of a page. It has no text layer. Cairn read it anyway.

General notes

Read before building

  1. N1Dimensions in metres. Do not scale from this drawing.
  2. N2Notes are markdown files in a folder you pick. Cairn does not hold them, and it does not need a network to open them.
  3. N3Sync is optional. Without it the vault stays on one machine and costs nothing.
  4. N4Version history is kept per note, not per vault.
Schedule of rates

What the building costs

V-01

Vault

Freeone vault

  • Every room drawn on this sheet
  • Markdown files in a folder you choose
  • Version history on every note
  • Works with the network off
Download Cairn
S-01

Sync

$8per month

  • Everything in V-01
  • The same vault on desktop and phone
  • Add or remove devices whenever
  • Cancel and the files stay where they are
Start syncing — $8/month