A commonplace book app
An app for a commonplace book still collects items so they can return. Not a vault. Not a second brain.
You type commonplace book app because you want the practice on a phone, and the results are usually note apps wearing the wrong name. Folders. Graphs. A vault that never brings a line back.
A commonplace book app is smaller. One notebook. Other people's lines. You collect an item so it can return.
The unit is still an item: the text, its source, and the date you collected it. You are its keeper, not its author. A short annotation about why it stayed is enough. Skip the annotation if the line is enough. Later, once you have half-forgotten it, the item returns as a recollection. If the app never returns the line, it is only storage with a nicer icon.
Search is not the point. Tags are not the point. Return is the point.
Paper is the same practice with slower hands. An app is the same practice in a pocket. The medium changes. The job does not.
If that is the search, continue here: How to keep a commonplace book https://opuss.com/blog/keep
Opuss is that notebook, for iPhone. Free on the App Store. https://apps.apple.com/app/id6785198553
You collect an item. You can add an annotation. Later it returns as a recollection.
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The letter
Read issue 1. Ten we kept this week, and how to keep your own. Or start with how to keep.