iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Henry @henryfellerhoff.com · 17/09/2026

Ink & Switch's approach of being forward-looking while staying uncompromising on both the value of intention in what you make and the necessity of shaping the world to match your and your community'´s system of values is (in my opinion) the most essential message in software right now

A quote from Peter van Hardenberg, the lab director of Ink & Switch, from his talk "How to Research Tools for Thought":

"I would encourage everybody to think about how – as we're moving through this new world – that we are intentional about how we shape it. And I don't want to tell you whether you should or shouldn't adopt any particular technology, but I will tell you that the world will not wait for us – and that we need to figure out how we can engage with our values and our intentions, and how we can serve our communities to make sure that the people who are using these tools that we build and that other people build are able to do them in safe and trustworthy ways, but also in ways that are satisfying and joyful and let us have what we set out to do."

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 17/09/2026

Here it is—the final talk from our @localfirstconf.com Lab Day! After 10 years of Ink & Switch, Peter van Hardenberg @pvh.ca takes the long view. Why do we do research? Who does it serve? And what now, as the world gets weirder? How to Research Tools for Thought

youtube.com

How to Research Tools for Thought

YouTube video by Ink & Switch

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 15/09/2026

Today we bring you the second @localfirstconf.com Lab Day video. Follow Ivy Reese @spiralganglion.com as she whirls through PlayBook: A Programmable Paper Notebook It's a blank page in the truest sense, for pulling ideas out of your head so you can feel and think differently about them.

youtube.com

PlayBook: A Programmable Paper Notebook

YouTube video by Ink & Switch

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Alex Warth @alexwarth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Nearly every general-purpose programming language is Turing complete. So ask not what you can do with a language, but what a language makes worth the effort. A short note on "effective expressiveness": www.inkandswitch.com/malleable-so...

inkandswitch.com

Effective expressiveness

Everything is possible. What’s actually worth the effort?

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Andy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · 09/09/2026

Outstanding new work on a composable and collaborative malleable computing environment from @inkandswitch.com!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UxG... * Same data, collaboratively edited in different tools! * Same tools, themselves collaboratively edited! (cont)

youtube.com

Introducing Patchwork-26

YouTube video by Ink & Switch

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Alex Warth @alexwarth.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This week in Livelymerge, Dan Ingalls gives us a tour of Morphic: the scene graph, halos, text editing, and programming tools of the live, malleable kernel that lives inside an Automerge document.

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Automerge @automerge.org · 02/09/2026

🗞️ The August 2026 edition of This Month in Automerge is out! Check out what's new in the core libraries the last days of summer, and a few projects from the community that caught our eye 👀 automerge.org/blog/2026-au...

automerge.org

This Month in Automerge: August '26

Automerge 3.4.1, sturdier sync servers, a new access control guide, and news from around the ecosystem.

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Gabriel @thegabriel.eu · 02/09/2026

Can't say how exciting it is to see the Automerge ecosystem adopted for an incredible amount of usecases. Such amazing engineering!!! #automerge #inkandswitch #localfirst

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 31/08/2026

Today we're officially sharing the "Introducing Patchwork-26" video from Lab Day at this year's @localfirstconf.com We bring you the first look at Patchwork-26, the latest in our ongoing effort to realize Malleable Software, Universal Version Control, and Local-First Software.

youtube.com

Introducing Patchwork-26

YouTube video by Ink & Switch

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Alex Warth @alexwarth.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

We put a live programming system's entire heap inside an Automerge document — every object, class, method shared + persistent. It all worked, but it was sloooow. New lab note with Dan Ingalls and @pvh.ca on the optimizations that made Livelymerge 64× faster: www.inkandswitch.com/livelymerge/...

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Automerge @automerge.org · 12/08/2026

📅👀 The next set of community calls are posted to the Luma. Excited to see everyone there (and we'll also have This Month in Automerge in between) Register here: luma.com/automerge

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Alex Warth @alexwarth.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Everything in Livelymerge is persistent and shared — yay! Then I cmd-clicked a rectangle, and my halo popped up on your screen — whoops! New lab note with Dan Ingalls and @pvh.ca on the need for local state, and the simple mechanism that supports it: www.inkandswitch.com/livelymerge/...

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Alex Warth @alexwarth.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

We put a program's entire heap inside an Automerge document. Every object is persistent and shared: you and I can live in the same running program — and change it while it runs. New Livelymerge lab note, with Dan Ingalls and @pvh.ca: www.inkandswitch.com/livelymerge/...

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Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 06/08/2026

The Local‑First Conf 2026 recap is live! Miss the vibe or curious about local‑first? Watch the 2 min video: youtu.be/DelQ1_ua2yY?...

youtu.be

Local-First Conf 2026 Recap

YouTube video by Local-First Conf

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Brooklyn Zelenka @expede.wtf · 04/08/2026

Excited to have a ✨ guest post ✨ from @djwyen.bsky.social in our @inkandswitch.com Keyhive lab notes! The local-first setting is new to a lot of cryptographers; here Derek shares some of his insights working on the BeeKEM paper, cross-fork security (CFS), and fundamental protocol design tradeoffs 🐝

inkandswitch.com

06 · E2EE in the Local-First Setting

Examining design considerations for developing cryptography for the local-first setting.

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Automerge @automerge.org · 31/07/2026

🆕 We're trying something new: here's the first ever This Month in Automerge 🗞️✨ Check out what's been happening in the core libraries, and a few projects in the ecosystem! automerge.org/blog/2026-ju...

automerge.org

This Month in Automerge: July '26

Hexane v1 lands in Automerge, Subduction sync server hardening, a BeeKEM paper preprint, and more.

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 31/07/2026

We’re going to do some work on the Lab Day talks before we release them. In the meantime - all the Day 1 & 2 talks are up!

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Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 31/07/2026

My talk at @localfirstconf.com is up, in which I argue that local-first has a role to play in improving the resilience of democratic societies in an era of geopolitical tensions. I'm pretty happy with how this talk turned out www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Ru...

youtube.com

Martin Kleppmann — Local-first in an unstable world

YouTube video by Local-First Conf

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Scott Jenson @jenson.org · 31/07/2026

My LocalFirst talk is up! How the Desktop UX needs to evolve This is a "part 2" of my #ubuntu talk last year. This time with more demos! www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOL...

youtube.com

Scott Jenson — How the Desktop UX needs to evolve to keep up with Local-first

YouTube video by Local-First Conf

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Brooklyn Zelenka @expede.wtf · 22/07/2026

📃🐝✨ Excited to share a preprint about BeeKEM, a decentralized / local-first variant of MLS's TreeKEM (group E2EE) that we designed at @inkandswitch.com. Huge thanks to our coauthors for the writeup and empirical analysis — even we were pleasantly surprised by the performance results 📊

eprint.iacr.org

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Alexander Obenauer @alexanderobenauer.com · 20/07/2026

Something I haven't gotten to say in a while... new lab note today! It's on a kind of user interface that pops up only occasionally: the extemporaneous UI that allows users to 'wave their wand' & get the interface they need through direct interaction. Read on: alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/041/

alexanderobenauer.com

LN 041: Extemporaneous UIs

Tear-off menus, quantized semantic zoom, and spatial computational canvases show us one approach to frictionless malleable interfaces.

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Frida @coffandro.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Got @inkandswitch.com's Backstitch addon setup for live collab within my team, can't wait to get to work!

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pvh @pvh.ca · 04/07/2026

From research, to prototype, to a real plugin you can install in the Godot Asset Store, Backstitch is a branch of our research into universal version control brought to life in the Godot game engine! You can check it out now: store.godotengine.org/asset/inkand...

store.godotengine.org

Backstitch - Godot Asset Store

Real-time version control for Godot! Backstitch enables fast collaboration for dev teams, game jams, and classrooms.

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Daniel Pipkin 🦥 @danielpipk.in · 03/07/2026

I just got around to watching this. I love it so much. Looks amazing for game jams. Good job Lilith and congratulations to @inkandswitch.com for yet another smash hit.

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Automerge @automerge.org · 19/06/2026

🍿For anyone that wasn't able to make it earlier this week, the recording is up! www.youtube.com/watch?v=afwm...

youtube.com

June 2026 Automerge Community Call

YouTube video by Automerge

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chee rabbits @chee.party · 19/06/2026

www.inkandswitch.com/tangents/art... this is the best thing i have ever read

inkandswitch.com

Artificial

An LLM is a computer program. We should talk about it like a computer program.

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Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 19/06/2026

Backstitch (backstitch.dev) brings Automerge-based collaboration and version control to the Godot game engine. It's is vastly more usable than Git, and a lovely showcase of what Automerge can do. Great talk from Lilith Duncan introducing the project: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAJ_...

youtube.com

Beyond Git: Real-Time Version Control for Godot – Lilith Duncan – GodotCon 2026

YouTube video by Godot Engine

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andrew blinn @disconcision.com · 08/06/2026

We’re doing a user study to find out how adding always-on live values alongside code effects writing and debugging experiences for functional programming. See reply for sign-up details

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pvh @pvh.ca · 05/06/2026

This is so cool. This is the dream -- people making stuff for each other with the things that we invent. I love it. jatazak.itch.io/multiplayer-...

jatazak.itch.io

Multiplayer Bitsy by jatazak

make bitsy games with friends

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Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 04/06/2026

We're thrilled to announce our next speaker batch for Local-First Conf 2026.

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 01/06/2026

Newsletter subscribers got Dispatch 017 last Thursday: A Peek at Patchwork Progress The next few months will be a blur in the run-up to @localfirstconf.com and the Lab Day we’re hosting as part of it. All our teams are busy prepping the work they’d like to show, polishing features, planning demos.

inkandswitch.com

A Peek At Patchwork Progress

It’s all hands on deck as we prepare Patchwork for the upcoming Local-First Conf in Berlin. Plus, Ivy Reese shares the technical & social design behind Tenfold.

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 29/05/2026

Check out @expede.wtf's lab note about designing bijou64, Bijective variable-length encodings for unsigned integers. It is "accidentally fast", which was a surprising and delightful result.

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Brooklyn Zelenka @expede.wtf · 29/05/2026

Oh hey, I wrote thing 💎 www.inkandswitch.com/tangents/bij...

inkandswitch.com

bijou64

An accidentally fast variable-length integer encoding

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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 14/05/2026

A new Lab Note by Ink & Switch Researcher John Mumm, "Progressions", about the learnings from composing independent audio tools into Patchwork, part of our malleable software research www.inkandswitch.com/patchwork/no...

Screenshot from the article https://www.inkandswitch.com/patchwork/notebook/progressions/

"One of the themes we talk about at Ink & Switch is “situated software”, tools that are developed for the specific requirements of an individual or small community. I was interested in seeing if I could develop a patchwork tool that could not only solve my specific problem here but generally support my processes when writing progressions."

situated software link goes to https://gwern.net/doc/technology/2004-03-30-shirky-situatedsoftware.html

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Michael Homer @mwh.nz · 06/05/2026

Are you working to make programming more direct, tangible, and alive? Share your work at LIVE, the world's premier gathering on live programming, held online this October! LIVE welcomes submissions from academia, industry, and individuals. Call for submissions and more details on liveprog.org/

liveprog.org

Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE)

The 12th Workshop on Live Programming (LIVE 2026) will take place online. LIVE invites submissions of ideas for improving the immediacy, usability, and learnability of programming.

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Adam Wiggins @adamwiggins.com · 06/05/2026

163 CFP submissions for @localfirstconf.com this year That's for 18 available speaking slots, so will be roughly a 10% acceptance rate 😰 CFP committee is putting in extra hours to give each and every one a thorough review

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Orion Reed @orionreed.com · 02/05/2026

The nascent HTML-in-Canvas API is exciting to me not because of flashy effects, but because it extends the semantics that the DOM can (tractably) represent — as a tiny example, it's possible to show an element in multiple places, cheaply, under arbitrary transforms. folkjs.org/demos/html-i...

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Boris @bmann.ca · 27/04/2026

Ok! Tomorrow night (Tuesday) is @atproto.berlin meetup atmo.rsvp/p/atproto.be... I had originally thought I might also organize a @localfirstconf.com meetup (we toured the venue today, looking great!) but I only have the energy for one. So come join us tomorrow!

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el @elliot.website · 24/04/2026

I made some letters for this :) It was fun ty @spiralganglion.com and @seaofclouds.com and i&s.

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Ivy Reese @spiralganglion.com · 23/04/2026

One of the funnest projects I have ever worked on!! Huge props to @seaofclouds.com for all the incredible design work, and everyone on the team and in the community for making so many fun letters!

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andrew blinn @disconcision.com · 24/04/2026

i made an H for this

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Forrest O. @forresto.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Click around there. 😎 I made one of the "T" sketches, a port of my animated Sierpiński curve. Impressed with the other sketches, music, and background effects. Good company.

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Mimi Reyburn @mimi.computer · 24/04/2026

✨ happy birthday Ink & Switch! ✨ I had the best time making letters! thanks @spiralganglion.com @seaofclouds.com <3

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Ivy Reese @spiralganglion.com · 23/04/2026

Here are some of the letters I made for Tenfold, the fun little "birthday party" we're having as Ink & Switch turns 10 years old. • a catenoid, designed by todd matthews and coded by me • gizmos, from inkling • "enbossed" • a sphere made of circles, eclipsed 🤍 inkandswitch.com/project/tenf...

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Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 23/04/2026

Happy birthday @inkandswitch.com! Ink & Switch is now 10 years old, and is celebrating with a piece of interactive digital art on www.inkandswitch.com – have a play with it :)

inkandswitch.com

Ink & Switch

An independent research lab exploring the future of tools for thought.

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Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 23/04/2026

"It's been a kind of a good deal to say like, look, I'll just let Google manage my identity and then I can click the login with Google button everywhere. But it's a little bit of a deal with the devil. " @adamwiggins.com

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Boris @bmann.ca · 22/04/2026

As part of @inkandswitch.com, I'm helping to organize Lab Day, the third day of this year's @localfirstconf.com I'm in Berlin next week, gauging interest in a "meet people interested in / attending Local First Conf" Location TBD Thurs 30th 6:30pm smokesignal.events/did:plc:2cxg...

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Michael Muré @michaelmure.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I'd like to announce github.com/MichaelMure/..., a go native @automerge.org implementation. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the rust version (no sync protocol/repos), but has the core CRDT logic and should be reasonably fast. It produces byte identical data, and has the same license.

github.com

GitHub - MichaelMure/gotomerge: A partial implementation of automerge in go

A partial implementation of automerge in go. Contribute to MichaelMure/gotomerge development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 22/04/2026

🎙️ Announcing two speakers for Local-First Conf 2026, Berlin: Armin Ronacher @mitsuhiko.at — creator of Flask and co-founder of Earendil. Colin Daymond Hanna @c01in.bsky.social — co-founder of Earendil and former Balderton partner. They're speaking together. We can't wait!

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Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 22/04/2026

The talk that launched Local-First Conf in 2024. @martin.kleppmann.com speaking about the past present and future of local first.Get your tickets for our 2026 edition: www.localfirstconf.com www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMq0...

youtube.com

The past, present, and future of local-first - Martin Kleppmann (Local-First Conf)

YouTube video by Local-First Conf

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