iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Ink & Switch

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

Ten years in, the lab is taking on weirder problems than ever: versioning massive assets in games, programming with your hands and a pen, figuring out how AI could ever run safely inside a power grid. Bring us your weirdest problems. That's what we're here for.

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

Research can be an act of service. That's how we think about tools for thought: we want to help people in other fields do their best work. Sometimes with technology, like Automerge. Other times by giving a problem a name, like local-first, so that a community can form and flourish around it.

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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

Ivy gives a glimpse at how PlayBook lets you build dynamic behaviours from tangible materials — like "flux", which lets you paint a selection that grows and spreads like fluid, enveloping your ink strokes as you write and sketch. The research is ongoing; enjoy this preview, stay tuned for more!

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

PlayBook is malleable software in a rather particular way. Everything in PlayBook — the pens, pages, UI panels, even the camera through which you view your notebook — is made of "materials" like Ink and Paper, designed to be modified from within PlayBook using just your hands and the pen.

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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 · 01/09/2026

The @automerge.org community Discord chat is a good place to hang out with like-minded folks discord.gg/zKGe4DCfgR We host online lab talks every once in a while as well.

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

Presented live at Local-First Conf in Berlin. Patchwork is available now at patchwork.inkandswitch.com You can follow along with lab notes about the Patchwork project www.inkandswitch.com/patchwork/no...

inkandswitch.com

Patchwork Notebook

Internal notes from our ongoing research into soft, softer and softest software

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

Each member of the Patchwork team introduces a unique aspect of the project, from the core architecture that fuses the web platform and Automerge @automerge.org, to various wild experiments like a video editor, a music composition toolbox, and a remake of our travel planning prototype Embark.

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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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Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 15/07/2026

Our research tracks are all listed on our website with links into lab notes and essays www.inkandswitch.com

LOCAL-FIRST SOFTWARE

Exploring software architecture that returns data to users and enables collaboration in every tool.
MALLEABLE SOFTWARE

Designing software environments where people can customize tools in the moment to meet their unique needs.
PROGRAMMABLE INK

Discovering a dynamic medium for sketching ideas where adding behaviors and interaction is as natural as applying ink to paper.
UNIVERSAL VERSION CONTROL

Building tools to help people explore alternatives, keep track of history, and collaborate better, across all kinds of media.

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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

We hope to see many of you at @localfirstconf.com in Berlin. This may be your last chance to grab tickets! We're treating Lab Day and the conference as one of our team summits, so you'll see the bulk of the lab in person. Subscribe to the newsletter for first notice of more.

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

@adamwiggins.com Adam published two notes about Firehose, the first outlining his desires, the prior art, and anticipated challenges, and the second sharing how he built email triage with an embedding-based classifier.

adamwiggins.com

Personal information firehose · Adam Wiggins

My new research project asks whether a personal algorithm, inspired by social media, can help us filter our email, group chats, and other personal correspondence.

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

Ink & Switch founder Adam Wiggins @adamwiggins.com recently returned to the lab for a research residency. With Firehose, he’s created a personal algorithm that organizes the stream of email and other messages flowing into his life, learning and adapting to his preferences.

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

Last month we celebrated the lab’s tenth anniversary with Tenfold, an expression of creative code and beautiful design. Read more about the various forms of design that went into The Tenfold Playground by @spiralganglion.com

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

chee rabbits @chee.party built a space for making software by hanging out with your friends. You talk and doodle about software, and an AI turns each of your ideas into Patchwork tools. A new kind of high-level software development, as the act of creation lives entirely within the chitter chatter.

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

And a follow up diving into architecture, Implementing a Local-First Task Framework, @alexwarth.bsky.social "Each user has a pool of task workers that can run tasks from a set of task queues that user contributes work to."

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

A Local-First Task Framework, @alexwarth.bsky.social "The goal of this framework is to enable the burden of computation to be distributed among users’ computers — including servers in the cloud."

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

Alex Warth @alexwarth.bsky.social has long been exploring the question: what does it mean to collaborate on computation itself? He is designing a framework for distributing computational tasks across users in local-first software.

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

Orion Reed @orionreed.com prototyped Breadboard and Space-frame, the former giving a visual zoom-out reveal for the various tools that comprise the Patchwork GUI, and the latter letting you compose tools that transform each other’s data merely by placing them side-by-side.

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

@grjte.sh prototyped two flavors of “history” within the system, exploring how to find your way back to things without having to organize them up front. She lands on the idea of reliving history, like scrolling back through past sessions to see documents as they were at the moment you opened them.

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

Patchwork is our collaborative, version-controlled, local-first, malleable software system. Over the past two years, it’s become the home for the majority of our team’s documents & prototypes. We live & work inside Patchwork every day. And now, fresh lab notes from the Patchwork researchers

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