The Idea Archive is a place to keep every idea you have, the material that feeds them and the connections between them, until an idea is ready to become something. It is built for people with a lot of ideas and little time: writers, artists, designers and anyone who makes things.

It is built to be used in seasons. There are no streaks, quotas or daily targets anywhere in it. An idea can sit for a year and still be here, with everything you knew about it, when you come back.

For the thinking behind the archive, read On keeping ideas under Resources.

How it is laid out

The home page runs from top to bottom.

• At the top: this page and About Saint Violet.
• Capture: the inbox, where anything goes first.
• The archive, the first row of tabs: Ideas, Notes and Connections. These hold what you have collected.
• The work, the second row: Develop, Ready, Desk and Resources. These hold the work of turning an idea into something. Desk holds the Inbox and the notes not yet linked to an idea.
• Where the archive stands: your ideas by stage, with a count in each column.
• Waiting longest, at the foot of the page: the ideas in Incubating or Developing that have gone longest untouched.

Ideas sits at the center. Notes link to the ideas they feed, ideas link to each other and pairings link two ideas you have tried side by side.

Capturing

Anything that comes to you goes in the Inbox first: a phrase, an image you saw, a question, a half-idea. Do not stop to file it.

Click New in the inbox on the home page, or use the Capture form from your phone. If you know what it is, choose Idea or Note under Goes to. If you do not, leave it blank or choose Not sure yet. Items sent from the form arrive with Goes to blank, and you choose it when you sort. Keep the title short, and put a longer quote, an image or a link on the item's page. For an image, drop it into the item's page; on the free plan each upload can be up to 5 MB.

Sorting the inbox

Whenever the inbox feels full, go through it from the top.

1. Read the item and decide what it is. An idea is something you might make. A note is something that feeds an idea: a quote, a reference, an observation, an image, a finding.
2. Open the item, choose ••• > Move to, and pick Ideas or Notes. It keeps its date and everything on its page. For an idea, copy the first line into Seed.
3. Link a new note to any idea it feeds.