Hi Product Hunt, I'm Bahar 👋

Bayaaz is a Chrome extension for keeping what you read. Highlight a passage on any page and it lands in a side panel exactly as written, with its source attached. From there, two ways to keep it:

• Markdown, for order. One click gathers the collection into a clean .md file, dated, each source linked, with headings, lists, links and code intact. It opens in Obsidian, Notion or your own writing system as if it had been written there.

• Cards, for treasures. When one line deserves more, the Imprint Studio sets it on one of twelve papers, each studied from a real tradition of keeping words: illuminated manuscripts, wax-sealed letters, cuneiform clay, letterpress. Pick a paper, press the seal, export a PNG.

The part I spent longest on is typesetting. Each script is set the way it writes itself:

• Chinese follows the W3C's Chinese layout requirements: justified text, punctuation kept off line-starts.

• Japanese and Korean keep their own line-breaking and spacing.

• Hindi's Devanagari takes no letter-spacing, which would break the syllables and their conjuncts.

• Arabic, Persian and other connected scripts stay connected.

• Urdu is set in true Nastaliq from title to body: most of the web shows Urdu in Naskh, and clipping such a passage returns it to its own hand.

There is no account and no analytics. Unplug the network and everything works the same. The source is open.

About me and the name: I spent years working with old books, and I studied Urdu. Bayaaz takes its root from Arabic, b-y-ḍ: white, blank, a page waiting to be written. For centuries, Urdu and Persian poets kept a bayāz (بیاض) close at hand, a blank notebook for the couplets they couldn't bear to lose. This is that notebook, living quietly beside your browser.

One thing I'd love to hear: which page breaks your current clipper?