Lit is a local-first writing app built for scholars and researchers. Read papers, annotate, build a knowledge base, and write with citations — all in one place, all on your machine.

We've seen too many knowledge bases become graveyards — tens of thousands of notes hoarded, dusted, never revisited. Notes aren't the end product. They're matches. Lit is built to strike them — turning annotations into cards, cards into connections, connections into writing.

Most researchers stitch together 3-4 tools: a PDF reader, a note-taking app, a reference manager, and a citation plugin. Every handoff loses context. Lit treats the entire read → annotate → connect → write → cite workflow as one integrated pipeline.

What makes Lit different:

- PDF annotation: highlight and annotate papers inside the app. Annotations become cards in your knowledge base automatically.

- Native bibliography: search and browse your references without leaving the app. No Zotero tab-switching.

- First-class citeproc: write with [@key2024] citations that resolve inline. Export publication-ready documents.

- Knowledge graph: see how your notes connect. Backlinks, forward links, and PageRank surface what matters.

- Mindmap view: visualize and rearrange document structure as an interactive tree.

- Built-in LLM: ask questions about your notes, rewrite passages and insert drafts.

Under the hood: Rust backend (Tauri), not Electron. 15 MB binary, instant startup, sub-16ms keystroke latency. Your notes are plain markdown files on disk: git-friendly, grep-able, you own your data.

One-time purchase. No subscription.