Launching today
Junk
A floating scratchpad, one shortcut away
2 followers
A floating scratchpad, one shortcut away
2 followers
A floating scratchpad for thoughts you don't want to organise. One shortcut (CMD+J or CTRL+J), local notes and Markdown preview. Free, MIT-licensed. macOS, Windows and Linux.
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1/5 · I built Junk for the thought that needs somewhere to land, not a whole workspace.
One shortcut opens a floating scratchpad. Type a note, paste something worth keeping, preview the Markdown, then dismiss it with Esc. Notes stay local, with no account and no system to maintain. The code is free and MIT-licensed, so you can use it, change it or take it somewhere I haven't thought of.
I wanted the smallest possible gap between having a thought and having it written down, because that is where most of mine get lost. It is meant for the half-formed thought that is not ready for a proper notes system yet.
Junk opens my Weekathon: seven free, open-source launches in seven days, built with AI assistance. It is a humble public experiment, not an organised upvote push. After launch I'll work through bugs and practical requests, starting with small changes that genuinely help.
When you try it, what slows you down between thinking something and getting it written down?
2/5 · Shortcuts, privacy and the code
Press ⌘J on macOS, or Ctrl+J on Windows/Linux, type or paste, then dismiss the pad with Esc. Notes save locally; Markdown preview is available when you need some structure.
Notes and the font stay local; optional update checks contact GitHub. This is not a secure vault. Please check the release notes for platform-specific installation warnings and shortcut behaviour.
Try Junk: https://thejunk.app
Code: https://github.com/paulfxyz/junk
The week ahead: https://ph.paulfleury.com/
3/5 · Why I'm doing the Weekathon
Junk opens the seven-day Weekathon because the scope is honest. Seven free, open-source products launched over seven days, all built through vibe coding and AI-assisted design. Not seven products built from scratch in that week, and not a claim that every idea needs to become a business. Megamesh (https://megamesh.sh), a modest personal-VPN contribution from my cybersecurity side, closes the week on Monday 16.
This Weekathon is also dedicated to Web Summit and to the builders' mentality: shipping small, useful things in public, every day, during the week the builders come to Lisbon.
I'd also like this to be encouraging. You can use these tools and this way of working to build something useful for yourself, your company or someone else. Start with a problem you understand; direct the AI, check the result and get help where you need it. You don't have to wait for a product company to decide your small problem is worth solving.
I'm not asking a network to push this up a leaderboard. I rarely network on X or LinkedIn, though I'm sharing the experiment there and promoting some pre-launch posts. I'd rather find people who will use it and tell me where it gets in their way.
4/5 · Build once, own the tool
Part of my wall-of-fame spirit is a small, practical freedom: your words should survive this app. John Gruber credits Aaron Swartz's ideas, feedback and testing in Markdown's design. That history makes plain-text portability feel like a responsibility, not a checkbox.
https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
Junk is my smallest example of a bigger idea: use AI to build the tool, rather than making every use of the tool another AI task. A Chief Hacking Officer could turn recurring needs like this into shared, company-controlled software, with specialist help where needed. Colleagues should inherit something usable, not have to repeat the same prompts. “SaaS is dead.” is my economic provocation; this scratchpad is not evidence that every subscription can disappear. The useful comparison includes maintenance, security and the next person's ability to take over.
If Junk becomes an internal tool at your company, give your fork a home the company owns, not just a zip on one person's laptop. Keep the code, tests and release notes together. Share useful, non-sensitive fixes upstream so the next builder, human or AI-assisted, can start from something better tested. Your own adaptation still needs review.
5/5 · Contribute or connect
Junk is free and MIT-licensed. You can extend or commercialise the code while retaining the notices. One useful first contribution would be a well-described shortcut or Markdown issue: ask your AI for a small fix within a budget, review the patch, test it and send a focused PR.
I'll review the feedback, prioritise bugs and useful small changes, and do my best to fund the AI work to iterate with you.
Part of this public experiment is a demonstration of my skills and my case for the Chief Hacking Officer role. The title is deliberately playful; the consulting is serious: I'm open to a CHO brief of up to 30h/week with a great company or startup, a worthwhile product, trust and a modest budget. Job offers: paulfleury.com/contact. I also want to become more visible and meet people I wouldn't reach quietly building on my own. I'm also raising funds for Openline, my main startup: the aim is to reshape the eSIM market, with a deep pipeline of ideas ready to execute. Angels and VCs are welcome via paulfleury.com/contact. Junk remains its own open-source contribution.
Web Summit opens in Lisbon today (Monday 9 November) and runs until Thursday 12, so if you're there, we can meet this week. I'm attending on my own as a VIP attendee, with no booth, just conversations. I'm also working on Enki (https://enki.ngo), a public-good, local-first AI initiative with open blueprints. It's too big for me alone, so if you'd like to help, or you're a VC, investor or philanthropist in Lisbon or beyond, sometimes well beyond, reach me on X (@paulfxyz), LinkedIn or at paulfleury.com/contact.