What Edith Does

Edith is a dead-simple web notepad that lets you jot down text, code snippets, or notes and share them instantly with anyone. Just visit any URL you want — like edit.sunfox.org/my-shopping-list — start typing, and it saves automatically as you go. No buttons to click, no accounts to sign up for. It's meant to feel frictionless, like you're just writing into the void and magically having it stick around.

How It Works

The magic is in the URL structure. Whatever you type at /page-name gets saved to the server. You can view that same content in different formats depending on what you ask for: as plain text, formatted HTML (using Markdown), a slideshow, or even as a graph diagram. There's a keyboard shortcut to flip between edit mode and viewing the formatted version. The favicon even animates to show you when the page is being saved, giving you subtle feedback that your typing is being persisted.

Behind the scenes, the app runs on PHP and treats each page like a simple file on disk. It's also built as a REST API, so if you're technically inclined, you can programmatically create, update, or delete pages using standard web requests. You can make pages read-only by adjusting file permissions, or lock down the whole notepad from accepting new pages.

Who Would Use This

Anyone who needs a quick, ephemeral space to share text with colleagues or friends — think pasting code during debugging, sharing meeting notes, or collaborating on a grocery list. It's lighter and faster than opening Google Docs or Notion. Teams doing pair programming or quick knowledge sharing would find it handy. It's also small enough to self-host on your own server if you want full control and privacy, with straightforward setup options using Docker or a standard web server.

The trade-off is intentional: Edith doesn't try to be a full-featured note-taking app. It skips user accounts, permissions, version history, and rich formatting. That simplicity is the whole point — it gets out of your way.