A commonplace book that keeps itself.
Cairn gathers the passages and ideas you collect, links them together, and keeps them ready for your next essay.
Most notes apps are filing cabinets. Cairn points out which of your old notes matter to the page you are writing now.
The method
Three habits. None of them involve tagging.
Gather
Clip the passage, jot the question it raised, and move on. Cairn keeps the source attached, so the quote never loses its context.
Link
When a new note mentions an idea you have written about before, the two notes connect. Nothing has to be filed first.
Return
Each day Cairn brings back the notes most related to what you are writing, so the reading you did last spring can shape the draft you start today.
Who it is for
- Essayists
- Gather the quotes and half-formed arguments that become a piece months later.
- Graduate students
- Keep reading notes tied to the chapters and papers that produced them.
- Researchers
- Keep sources, quotes, and questions linked to the drafts they feed.
- Technical writers
- Trace every claim in a long document back to the note that first made it.