Writ ibrahemid

editor productivity rust scratchpad tauri

Use this command to install Writ:

winget install --id=ibrahemid.Writ -e

Writ is a hotkey-summoned scratchpad for developers. Press a global shortcut to summon a fast, distraction-free editor with tabs, autosave, and full-text search. Built with Tauri v2 and SolidJS for a tiny footprint and native feel.

Writ

A lightweight, always-ready text editor for developers.

Download · Website · Build from source

Why I built this

Most of what I open in a day is not code. It is prompts, specs, plans, agent output, knowledge files, the occasional config. Markdown everywhere, half of it written by a machine, and all of it needs a quick look or a quick edit before I move on.

Nothing I tried fits. Notepad++ is not my taste. Sublime is fast, but closing a pile of scratch tabs means a save dialog for every one of them. VS Code drags an IDE's worth of noise into a single markdown file. Obsidian is for people whose life is in their vault. Typora got one thing right: it treats a document the way a browser treats a page. You open it to read it, not to manage it.

Writ extends that to how I work: resident and summoned, not launched. One hotkey and the window is there, holding everything I dumped into it before. Buffers persist on their own, search reaches all of them, and files render in place, offline. Read, change, dismiss.

Features

Global hotkey summons the window from anywhere: Cmd+Shift+Space on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows and Linux
Autosave on every keystroke; buffers persist across restarts; crash recovery restores the last session
Full-text search across every buffer, backed by SQLite FTS5
Split-pane live preview: Markdown, HTML, Mermaid diagrams, and KaTeX math, rendered fully offline with scroll sync
Command palette on double-tap Shift; settings and every command are searchable from it
CodeMirror 6 editor with language auto-detection, live Markdown typography, and formatting shortcuts
Prompt fill: placeholder variables, a live token estimate, copy as prompt
Text transforms such as Tidy Whitespace, built from small composable passes
Workspace folders with a file tree, plus a watched inbox that opens new files as they arrive
writ CLI for opening files from the terminal; register Writ as the default app for text, config, and source files on macOS
Browser-style tabs with reopen-closed, light and dark themes, editor and preview font zoom
Local-only storage, no account, no telemetry; self-updates verify a signed manifest and can be turned off

Design decisions

Each of these is recorded in docs/adr/; the short version:

Buffers live in SQLite, not loose files. That is what makes autosave-per-keystroke, restart persistence, and instant full-text search possible. Files on disk still open and save normally; the database is the scratch layer where most text starts and much of it ends.
Resident, not launched. The app starts hidden and keeps running in the background, so the hotkey shows a window instead of booting a program. Cold start time stops mattering because it happens once.
Keyboard first. Every command, setting, and buffer is reachable from the palette. The mouse is optional.
The preview trusts nothing. Markdown, HTML, Mermaid, and KaTeX render from runtimes bundled into the app, and the preview blocks all network access.
The core does not know Tauri exists. writ-core, writ-storage, writ-render, and writ-plugin are plain Rust crates with no Tauri dependency; the shell is a thin adapter. The boundary is enforced by the build, not by convention.
Built to catch what other tools produce. The CLI, the watched inbox, and default-app registration all serve the same case: something else made a file, and Writ is where it opens, rendered and searchable.

flowchart LR
    classDef entry fill:#4f46e5,color:#fff,stroke:none
    classDef data fill:#312e81,color:#e0e7ff,stroke:none
    classDef crate fill:#eef2ff,color:#1e1b4b,stroke:#c7d2fe
    classDef zone fill:none,stroke:#818cf8,stroke-dasharray:3 3

    HK([global hotkey]):::entry
    CLI([writ CLI]):::entry
    INBOX([watched inbox]):::entry
    ASSOC([default app for .md, .log, .toml]):::entry

    subgraph FRONT [frontend · SolidJS]
        direction LR
        UI[components] --&gt; ST[stores] --&gt; SV[services]
    end

    subgraph SHELL [src-tauri · thin adapter]
        direction LR
        CMD[IPC commands]
        EVT[event emitter]
        FSW[file watcher]
    end

    subgraph CORE [pure Rust · no Tauri imports]
        direction LR
        WC[writ-corepolicy]:::crate
        WR[writ-rendermarkdown · mermaid · katex]:::crate
        WS[writ-storagepersistence]:::crate
    end

    HK &amp; CLI &amp; INBOX &amp; ASSOC --&gt; SHELL
    SV -- invoke --&gt; CMD
    EVT -. events .-&gt; SV
    FSW -. fs changes .-&gt; EVT
    CMD --&gt; WC
    WC --&gt; WR --&gt; PV[offline previewnetwork blocked]
    WC --&gt; WS
    WS --&gt; DB[(SQLiteWAL + FTS5)]:::data
    WS --&gt; FS[(files on disk)]:::data

    class FRONT,SHELL,CORE zone

See it in action

<img src="docs/media/html-split.png" />
<img src="docs/media/search-all-buffers.png" />
<img src="docs/media/command-palette.png" />

The landing page has a live editor you can try in the browser.

Keyboard shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Toggle window	`Cmd+Shift+Space`
New tab	`Cmd+T`
Close tab	`Cmd+W`
Switch tabs	`Cmd+[` / `Cmd+]`
Reopen closed tab	`Cmd+Shift+T`
Command palette	`Shift+Shift`
Toggle sidebar	`Cmd+S`
Rename tab	Double-click tab
Find in document	`Cmd+F`

Buffers are stored in a local SQLite database under your OS's standard application data directory.

Install

brew install --cask ibrahemid/writ/writ                              # macOS
winget install -e --id ibrahemid.Writ                                # Windows
curl -fsSL https://github.com/ibrahemid/writ/raw/main/install.sh | sh # Linux

Or grab a .pkg, .dmg, .msi, .AppImage, or .deb from Releases.

Build from source

Prerequisites: Rust 1.77+, Node.js 20+, pnpm 9+, and the Tauri v2 platform prerequisites for your OS.

git clone https://github.com/ibrahemid/writ.git
cd writ
pnpm install
cargo tauri dev

For a release build:

cargo tauri build

The installer or app bundle is written to src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Desktop shell	Tauri v2
Frontend	SolidJS + Vite
Editor	CodeMirror 6
Storage	SQLite (WAL mode, FTS5)
Core logic	Rust: `writ-core`, `writ-storage`, `writ-render`, `writ-plugin`

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the full system design and docs/adr/ for architecture decision records.

Contributing

Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow, coding conventions, and pull request process. Security issues go through SECURITY.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.