About
Opuss is a commonplace book.
For centuries, readers filled a single notebook with the lines worth returning to: a commonplace book. A sentence from a novel, a line of a poem, a thought from a letter. Not a diary and not a scrapbook, but a private anthology of borrowed words, collected slowly, returned to often. Opuss is that practice, rebuilt for the way we read now.
What it does
You collect an item from anything you are reading, on your phone, from the share sheet, in a few seconds. Opuss holds it, plainly and beautifully. You can add a private annotation, a note to your future self about why it mattered. And later, once you have half-forgotten it, the item returns to you as a recollection: a quiet resurfacing of something you chose to collect.
If an item deserves an audience, you can publish a single item as its own page. Everything else stays private.
Page over platform
Opuss has no feed, no algorithm deciding what you see, and no metrics turning reading into a performance. There are no likes, no followers, no streaks. A collected item is the unit, and the page is the page. The design tries to disappear so the words can be the only thing in the room.
What you keep is yours
An item you collect is a quotation from someone else's work. You are its keeper, not its author. Your annotations are your own words, and they stay private unless you choose to publish them. We never attach your name to an item when it helps the service work for another reader.
A little history
The first Opuss launched in December 2011 as an Instagram for words (TechCrunch, 7 December 2011). Apple made it App of the Week at Easter 2012. Then a writers marketplace. It ran out of money, lingered, then quietly went away. Only this version is the commonplace book: you collect an item, and it returns as a recollection. Rebuilt from scratch as a solo project by its original founder. No venture money, no team of thirty.
Adam, founder
How to keep a commonplace book
The letter
Ten we kept this week, and how to keep your own. Start with how to keep.