iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Ivy Reese @spiralganglion.com · 15/09/2026

here's a peak at what i've been doing for the past few years: building a calm, playful little space for thinking, doodling, journalling, and programming with materials like ink, paper, and… flux that spreads through your notes like a fluid wait what? www.youtube.com/watch?v=GurW...

youtube.com

PlayBook: A Programmable Paper Notebook

YouTube video by Ink & Switch

35218

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

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

39133

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Local-First Conf @localfirstconf.com · 12/07/2026

Lilith presenting Backstitch backstitch.dev by @inkandswitch.com - local first version control for gaming teams using Godot @godotengine.org Usable by everyone building games, not just programmers or dedicated IT to make git work.

Picture by @expede.wtf

Lilith is on stage describing Backstitch

1235

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Josiah @josiahwitt.com · 07/07/2026

Unfortunately not going to make it to @localfirstconf.com this year, but have a couple tickets now that aren’t going to be used. If you’d like to go but couldn’t afford tickets give me a shout!

2125

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

pvh @pvh.ca · 16/06/2026

Anyone out there know how to make my SharedWorkers visible in the Chrome DevTools? Navigating via chrome://inspect#workers is very annoying.

151

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Alex Elizabeth Byrne McMillan @undeniablyalex.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

YOU’RE LISTENING TO SISYPHUS FM, THE HOME OF NON-STOP ROCK

6085400316194

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Nic McConnell @mcconnell.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

A class at my kids’ school put up little statements about the good they want to do in the world and I was over the moon about this one - then I learned they meant to say “teach people in jail” which is also good!

214237414018

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Lu wilson @todepond.com · 24/04/2026

saw the debut of this at the algoravioli

0161

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

pvh @pvh.ca · 23/04/2026

Ink & Switch is ten years old this month! We made you a card to celebrate. inkandswitch.com

710615

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

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.

38817

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Nadieh Bremer @nadiehbremer.com · 12/02/2026

📣 NEW! I’ve just released the BIGGEST and perhaps most creative project I’ve ever worked on! “Searching for Birds” searchingforbirds.visualcinnamon.com 🐤 A project, an article, an exploration that dives into the data that connects humans with birds, by looking at how we search for birds.

26503182

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Adam Wiggins @adamwiggins.com · 12/02/2026

Two weeks of real-world use on Firehose, my email triage prototype. • 572 emails automatically labeled • 77% coverage (confident labels) • 98.2% accuracy on confident ✨

171

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Mimi Reyburn @mimi.computer · 09/02/2026

come join us again @feelingof.london for demos and good vibes! 😌💚

075

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Orion Reed @orionreed.com · 04/02/2026

the application (app) model of software can, should, and must be abolished.

2247

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Open Local First @localfirst.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

#LocalFirst devroom at #FOSDEM will be live at 09:00 CET ! For those who are not with us in Brussels to attend 8 hours of the best speakers lineup ever, there is a live stream. You can interact with the speakers during Q&A sessions by using Matrix. See you in a bit. live stream: openlocalfirst.org

openlocalfirst.org

Open Local First

For the first time this year, the FOSDEM conference will host a devroom for Local First, CRDTs and sync protocols and sync engines. FOSDEM is the biggest Free and Open Source conference in Europe. Thi...

0163

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

spencer chang @spencer.place · 22/01/2026

every time i moved & clicked in my browser today

1172

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

It’s called ‘vs code’ because the code is an enemy you are fighting

12770185

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Ivy Reese @spiralganglion.com · 01/01/2026

Here's a little spatial / tangible tool I made to explore an algorithm with my hands and eyes. I saw an error diffusion matrix on wikipedia and it looked vaguely like a circle, so I built this board game-inspired tool to feel out just how spatial it actually was. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vZc...

youtube.com

December 2025

YouTube video by Feeling of Computing

185

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

If Books Could Kill @ifbookspod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

From "Democrats should abandon trans rights" to "I want to have sex with a computer." Wake up, honey, it's the worst takes of the year.

patreon.com

The Worst Takes of 2025 | If Books Could Kill

3057658

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

grjte @grjte.sh · 23/12/2025

🧵 Could Bitchat have 5x the range and 100x the throughput for the same power expenditure? I explored how Wi-Fi Aware could improve the reliability and throughput of Bitchat and mobile ad-hoc networks in the absence of internet connectivity. #bitchat 👇

14112

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Brooklyn Zelenka @expede.wtf · 31/10/2025

🚀🚀🚀 I'm doin' a signal boost! I just met Vanessa, an early-career dev with great energy looking for work! Interested in games and webdev, and working on a PS1-style game in her spare time. (Contact info is on her website) 👀 queenofsquiggles.codeberg.page

queenofsquiggles.codeberg.page

Queen Of Squiggles's Blog

1124

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Automerge @automerge.org · 16/10/2025

We have a shiny new website courtesy of @spiralganglion.com and @seaofclouds.com 🙌 🚀 Check it out: automerge.org

A screenshot of the Automerge landing page. It says "Version control for your data. Automerge is a local-first sync engine for multiplayer apps that works offline, prevents conflicts, and runs fast."

210718

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 03/10/2025

It's that time again: ✨we’re hiring✨ We're looking for a @godotengine.org IDE Engineer to help us build the next generation of collaboration tools inside the engine itself! More detail here: inkandswitch.com/jobs/godot-ide-engineer (Remote role 🌍🌎🌏)

inkandswitch.com

Godot IDE Engineer

Help build native, visual version control for collaborative game development in Godot

14723

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Josh Horowitz @joshuahhh.com · 20/09/2025

12 exciting live-programming projects will be presented at LIVE this year. It's free, online, and coming up soon! Sat 9/27: Videos premiere Sat 10/4: Q & A and discussion over Zoom Details on projects are up already at liveprog.org; more schedule & links coming soon. Hope to see ya there!

03314

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

izzy curse-trel @iznaut.com · 13/08/2025

hi hello my husband recently accepted a job in Victoria, BC so we are hoping to immigrate to Canada before the year is over soooo i will be leaving my in-office IT job and be out of work again. shares and job leads welcome!

29271142

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 05/08/2025

The Ink & Switch team is coming through London and we're having a social to share some recent news and research from the lab, and catch up with people in London interested in local first, malleable software, and other similar areas of making better computing. Aug 16th, 6pm in London

lu.ma

Ink & Switch London Social · Luma

The Ink & Switch team is coming through London and we're having a social to share some recent news and research from the lab, and catch up with people in…

24112

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Ink & Switch @inkandswitch.com · 23/07/2025

Do you write TypeScript? Enjoy Automerge? Love building both tools and community? You might be a great fit for our ✨new✨ Automerge TypeScript Maintainer role! www.inkandswitch.com/jobs/automer... (Remote role, 🇬🇧 UK-based preferred but not required)

inkandswitch.com

Automerge TypeScript Maintainer

Industrial research lab working on digital tools for creativity and productivity

05822

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Alexander Obenauer @alexanderobenauer.com · 18/07/2025

Completed another trip around the sun this week. With gratitude, something to share: Creative work is hilariously unintuitive to the adult mind. We are like beavers, blocking flow at the first sound of running water with dams made of any debris around. Here are reminders I hold close: (1/2)

You can do things for their own sake without having to provide justification. But if you really need one, it's this: *things lead to other things.*

Doing things opens up doors, ideas, pathways, and opportunities that couldn't have been imagined or designed without having first done those things. By definition, doing things you enjoy leads to more things you'll enjoy.

It's another way of saying "the dots connect looking backwards", one of the three messages in Steve Jobs' (wonderful) commencement address at Stanford, but it keeps the frame in the present.

Simply following one's curiosity — even when it seems unproductive to do so — is wildly underestimated as an activity that moves the human race forward. Feynman's spinning plates led to his Nobel prize.

It's easy to lose motivation when it isn't clear how some work will contribute. But quite often, the biggest contribution something makes is the next thing it leads us into. We can't predict these paths in advance, but we can notice how much it has happened in the past, and trust that it will continue.

This is one worth repeating early and often. Things lead to other things. It's a powerful reminder in the face of creative doubts. "What if this is nothing?" Doesn't matter, it will lead to something.

In creative work, there is this frustration while mid-process that reflects the delta between where a work is and where you want it to be. When it's gone, the work is done. This means that one is always experiencing this in the ongoing activity of their creative work. There's always a next problem to be solved, or a need to get some work away from some unsatisfying place, or toward some unknown more satisfying one. It isn't always clear, in fact, it's usually unclear, where to go — that's why it's so frustrating. We live with this frustration during the whole life of a creative work.

You have to learn to embrace this frustration. The frustration sometimes feels like a despair born from fear that the work won't get better, that it won't ever meet your tastes. But it should be embraced: it's what tells you your work will get better, because it keeps your mind at the task of figuring how to improve it. It is a *good* frustration.

Once you learn to embrace this frustration, you can start to enjoy it, which helps you enjoy your work more (which helps you do harder things).

It helps to have gone through many resolutions of this frustration; that gives you the confidence to know early on in a creative project that it will, in time, dissipate, as you find your way through the nooks of creative revelation. But I've found that it seems to require revolutions in each domain; this frustration is hard to enjoy in a new field of creation, since this confidence has much less to ground itself on.

It's important to be able to identify the good frustration. Simply being able to identify it can turn it from a source of negativity to one of excitement and energy. Once identified, it can become a source of action, sometimes even direction. In particularly challenging moments, this frustration can end early work. Pointing at this frustration, describing its source, and what about the work has led to it, is often all you need to think more clearly about how to proceed.

I furiously note-take my way into the depths of a project. These notes become Ariadne's thread; when I'm deep in the details and I've lost sense of the project's purpose — which I need to color my interpretation of the details, including filtering out those that do not matter, and to direct my next actions — I can return to those notes which pull me into the right perspective again. They are also helpful when writing descriptions of the project for public consumption; once I know the inner-most details, challenges, rewarding pieces, etc., it becomes much harder to describe the project from the outside. I'm now a native to the project, and I can no longer give a newcomer directions that make any sense to them. The original notes serve this purpose wonderfully.

David Bowie:

> Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist with the rest of society.

I've found it necessary to document that spark from first flint to the first moment of forgetfulness.

The creator's mind can often fall into a perfectionist's trap: "It must first be *right*, then it can be." Obsession grows with something being perfect, more perfect, more than perfect. This will grind work to a halt. We hold on too tight.

In these times, it's important to reorient to experimentation and consistency. It is at these times that I must catch the down-spiral early, and instead refocus my obsession on consistent work and progress.

Striving for consistency inevitably leads to quality; striving for quality inevitably destroys consistency.

This advice does not necessarily supersede the need to acknowledge one’s seasonal creative phases or to give into good distractions. So this may not be the right advice at all times, but you'll know the times when it is, because it'll annoy you.

And it's important to remember: **Diverse inputs create rich outputs**. This happens in big ways and small. On the latter: at some surprisingly early point, doing a lot more of the work won't make it any better, but doing a lot of *other* things will. On the former: one must cultivate an interest in and understanding of many different things. Each field has different ways of seeing the world, and each person has still more nuanced takes. Adopting many lenses helps us see creative solutions to the ever-harder problems we and the world will face. Different lenses are one of the great gifts we get from reading, inquisitive conversation, and following obsessions down deep paths.

1122

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Dr. Nic Junius @quakefultales.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

This is the platonic ideal of sniffing

10355511433

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Josh Horowitz @joshuahhh.com · 15/07/2025

One week until MONDAY, JULY 21st, which I call "LIVE Workshop Christmas". (It's Christmas for me and the PC, cuz we get to look at all the cool stuff you submit! I guess for you it's more like "the submission deadline".) liveprog.org

071

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

pvh @pvh.ca · 15/07/2025

Automerge 3 is here: the heart transplant is complete! Huge improvements in memory usage and (in most cases) correspondingly big performance improvements too. Backwards compatible on disk and the network so there's no reason not to upgrade today: automerge.org/blog/automer...

automerge.org

Automerge 3.0 | Automerge CRDT

Automerge is a local-first data sync engine that makes it easy to build collaborative apps. Today we're excited to announce version 3.0 of Automerge!

413032

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

OhmJS @ohmjs.org · 10/07/2025

A few different Ink & Switch projects have used Ohm…here's the latest one. From @alexwarth.bsky.social (co-creator of Ohm) and @geoffreylitt.com (who made Wildcard, one of our all-time favourite Ohm-powered projects)

183

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Josh Horowitz @joshuahhh.com · 13/06/2025

BTW: I'm slowly assembling a LIVE Primer to help folk submitting to LIVE (& others) get the lay of the land. Please take a look and let me know what's missing, what sucks, what's rad, etc. live-workshop.github.io/primer/

live-workshop.github.io

The LIVE Primer

2177

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt.com · 10/06/2025

New longform @inkandswitch.com essay! 📜 Malleable Software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps by me, @joshuahhh.com, @pvh.ca and @seaofclouds.com inkandswitch.com/essay/mallea... It's about why people need agency over their software tools, and how to make that happen.

inkandswitch.com

Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps

The original promise of personal computing was a new kind of clay. Instead, we got appliances: built far away, sealed, unchangeable. In this essay, we envision malleable software: tools that users can...

39724

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Johannes Schickling @schickling.dev · 27/05/2025

After 4 years of work, I'm incredibly excited to introduce LiveStore, the next-gen data layer I'm building for Overtone. It's based on reactive SQLite and has a built-in sync engine. Give it a try - would love your feedback!

1010320

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Bret Victor @worrydream.com · 15/05/2025

Computational Public Space. A talk about a values-driven approach to integrating computation into cities. (40 min) www.youtube.com/watch?v=PixP...

youtube.com

Computational Public Space

YouTube video by Dynamicland

28626

Paul Sonnentag @paulsonnentag.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

What if you didn't need git to collaborate on games? We've been prototyping a new approach to collaboration in Godot: live and async collaborative editing, with branches and diffs, built right into the editor. We're looking for people to test out an early version, see link in next post:

45511

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 13/05/2025

Great talk by @pvh.ca on how @inkandswitch.com goes about doing impactful research youtu.be/w7DVlI_Ztq8?...

youtu.be

How to Do Ambitious Research in the Modern Era

YouTube video by Nemertes

0275

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

el @elliot.website · 29/04/2025

Here's a cut of some of my interactive and visual work from the past year. I'm looking for work! I'm looking for remote work developing, prototyping and/or researching on editors, custom interactive things, or visualizations. I mostly work in JS/TS. Let me know if you know something pls ty :)

59024

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

gamera obscura october edition @ohrobin.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

It doesn’t matter if they’re “coming for you next.” Even if your position and your privilege will ALWAYS protect you and everyone you love, it is your job as a conscious human being to fight for justice. That’s just the way it fucking is. You don’t get to abdicate that responsibility.

141541336

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

v buckenham @v21.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

people find their own use for tools

1184

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

pvh @pvh.ca · 28/03/2025

This is the logo for a new Ink & Switch research track. What are your guesses for the name of this research area?

18417

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

Damien Masson @damienhci.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Photoshop for text. In our #CHI2025 paper “Textoshop”, we explore how interactions inspired by drawing software can help edit text. We consider words as pixels, sentences as regions, and tones as colours. #HCI #NLProc #LLMs #AI Thread 🧵 (1/10)

25316

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

izzy curse-trel @iznaut.com · 02/02/2025

any Canadian game dev studios hiring rn just curious haha

5226105

Paul Sonnentag @paulsonnentag.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

Turns out the secret to loving junk mail: Buying a paper shredder. Now every promotional flyer becomes a satisfying destruction ritual. Making things more fun is an underrated strategy.

130

Reposted by Paul Sonnentag

WebAssembly from the Ground Up @wasmgroundup.com · 10/03/2025

Excited to announce the official launch of our online book, WebAssembly from the Ground Up! 🎉 It's the book we wish we'd had 3 years ago. No messing with tools and frameworks. It's a hands-on guide to the core of Wasm: the instruction set and module format. Link below. 👇

Learn Wasm by building a simple compiler in JavaScript. No compiler expertise necessary. All the code is in the book; we'll take you through it step by step. Get your hands dirty and see for yourself what WebAssembly is all about.

27334