STEP-FREE ACCESS
Your notes are files in a folder you chose
Every note is plain markdown sitting on your own disk. Open one in any editor. Copy the folder to a drive. If you stop using Cairn tomorrow, you still have every word.
CAIRN · NOTE NETWORK · ALL SERVICES RUNNING
Your notes are a network.
This is the map.
Cairn keeps every note as a plain markdown file on your own disk. Type two square brackets to join one note to another, and the backlink appears on both. Ten years in, the links are what you have; the map is how you read them.
- FAREFree for one vault
- SYNC$8 a month
- OFFLINEFull service, no connection
- FORMATMarkdown, on your disk
NETWORK MAP
One vault, eleven notes, four services
Drawn from a real vault of about nine thousand notes: the eleven that today’s writing touches. Point at a station to see which lines call there.
Selected station
Point at a station, or press Tab to walk the network. Click or press Enter to hold a station open.
Line A — backlinksLine B — shared tagsLine C — daily notesResurface — not opened in a year
KEY TO THE MAP
What each colour means
Three colours, three kinds of connection. They mean the same thing everywhere on this page and everywhere in the app.
Lines
- Line ABacklinks
- Two notes that link to each other. You made this connection on purpose.
- Line BShared tags
- Notes filed under the same tag, often written years apart.
- Line CDaily notes
- Notes you reached from a daily note. The line your day actually took.
- ResurfaceNot opened in a year
- A connection Cairn found for you, running to a note you had let go.
Marks
- Station
- One line calls here.
- Interchange
- Several lines call here. Change for any of them.
- Terminus
- The line starts or ends here.
A dashed route is the only one you did not draw. That is Resurface.
SERVICE INFORMATION
What runs, and what it costs you to leave
CHANGE HERE FOR
Type [[ to link one note to another
Pick the note you mean and the link is made. The backlink appears on the other note at the same moment. You never have to file the return journey yourself.
FIRST SERVICE
A daily note opens when you launch Cairn
Dated, blank, already in front of you. Yesterday's is one key away, and so is the one from four years ago today.
SEARCH — ALL LINES
Search reads inside scanned PDFs and images
A photographed notebook page, a scanned paper, a screenshot of a table: Cairn reads the text in them, so they answer to search like everything else.
LOST PROPERTY
Every note keeps its own version history
Open any earlier state of a note and take back the paragraph you cut last March. Nothing you wrote is discarded on your behalf.
SERVICE ON ALL ROUTES
The same vault opens on desktop and phone
One vault, two screens, no second copy to keep straight. It works with no connection; syncing is what the fare is for.
SPECIAL SERVICE · RUNS DAILY
Resurface
While you write, Cairn looks through the notes you have not opened in a year and finds the ones that connect to what is on the screen. They appear at the edge of the page, named, with the connection shown. You decide whether to follow.
It is the dashed line on the map: a service still running to a station you stopped getting off at.
- SOURCEYour own vault. Nothing leaves your disk.
- THRESHOLDUntouched for twelve months or longer.
- CONTROLDismiss a note and it stops being offered.
RESURFACED TODAY6 notes
| Time | Note | Via | Last opened | You |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09:12 | Estuary sediment cores | Line A | 14 months | Opened |
| 09:47 | Mnemonics from the Ad Herennium | Line B | 2 years | Kept |
| 11:03 | Kiln temperature curves | Line B | 17 months | Dismissed |
| 13:26 | Field recording — dawn chorus | Line A | 3 years | Opened |
| 15:40 | Letterpress lockup diagram | Line A | 22 months | Kept |
| 16:15 | Why the 1854 cholera map worked | Line B | 13 months | Opened |
Kept means you linked it into today’s note. Dismissed means you will not be shown it again.
FARES
Two fares. No zones.
You pay for one thing only: the same vault arriving on your other device. Everything that makes a note a note is in the free fare.
| INCLUDED | Single vaultFreeno account, no expiry | Sync$8per month |
|---|---|---|
| Vaults | One | As many as you keep |
| Devices | One machine | Desktop and phone |
| Markdown files on your disk | Yes | Yes |
| Works with no connection | Yes | Yes |
| [[ links and backlinks | Yes | Yes |
| Resurface | Yes | Yes |
| Search inside PDFs and images | Yes | Yes |
| Version history | On this machine | On every device |
| Account needed | No | Yes, for sync only |
| Get Cairn | Download Cairn | Add sync — $8 a month |
Stop paying and sync stops. The notes stay where they always were: in a folder on your disk, as markdown, readable by anything.