This is awesome I will definitely play around with it. Fits the niche gap as a standalone app vs something like [Observable Framework](https://observablehq.github.io/framework/) for data analytical type things.
I wish Notion could just integrate these things together and make it work, or someone build an Obsidian plugin. More often than not it would be so convenient to do something like this.
I went to look at Atuin Desktop to see what the crossover was with this product, and it's fascinating to see that the repo was archived the day this was posted here!
I feel like there has been a few takes on this (atuin desktop comes to mind[0] but apparently it's not a going concern anymore?) why hasn't it caught on?
I'm curious about this too. Org-babel, Jupyter, Atuin Desktop, etc. have explored similar ideas, but none became a mainstream way of working.
For people who used these tools long-term: what held them back? UX/accessibility, or do people simply prefer keeping documents separate from the actual work?
we saw a bunch of issues with desktop, in no particular order
1. authoring runbooks is difficult, most people barely document their work let alone make it executable
2. keeping runbooks up to date is difficult, they are error-prone across systems
3. agents are now pretty good at a number of the tasks these ideas solve for, and are good at working around issues caused by docs becoming out of date/etc
all these tools are great for your own notes, but are very difficult to scale
1. Ledge's bet is it shouldn't feel like authoring at all. I've always had markdown docs chock full of commands and docs so making them runnable was the next logical step for me.
2. True. Keeping any kind of documentation up to date is difficult
3. Also true. I'm hoping Ledge's built-in agent support will bridge that gap and allow agents to help keep the docs up-to-date
And yes, a "Team" notebook is a challenge. Technically anyone with SSH access can all share a Ledge notebook. But that probably doesn't get us all the way there.
Thanks again for providing your thoughts. This by no means is a solved problem but I'm interested to see where it goes!
Thanks for answering. That's really interesting.
Maybe agents flip this around. Instead of humans maintaining executable docs, the actual work generates the document.
It could become something like a PR-style review layer for agent work. You don't necessarily need to understand the underlying code or tooling, but you can inspect what changed, why it changed, and approve or reject it.
Do you think that would address any of the scaling problems you saw?
Very cool! I launched something similar as well. My idea was to create a working document in which people could develop their own tools and agents. Conversations with coding agents are treated as editable, executable documents. Both the person and the agent can write on the same page. Rather than correcting a mistake in a follow-up, you can rewrite it, delete a detour, or edit and re-run an earlier prompt. The file is always readable Markdown.
Check out: https://piary.dev/
Feel free to get in touch if you are open to an exchange, you can find my contact details in the write-up.
As an Emacs user for over a decade I think this is brilliant, it solves my biggest gripes with org-babel which prevent me from using it in a team setting.
Ledge is a lot like org-babel from Emacs, but for muggles: a familiar UI, and common format go a long way.
I wonder what would org-babel for team settings look like? Disk/interchange format seems less interesting than what gets shipped around and what the UX feels like.
cool idea, do you have any plans to integrate command generation with the shell completion / aliases / functions? Say I have tons of muscle memory on using ctrl-r fzf to get things from history, or on pressing tab to autocomplete pod names etc. so I would never write out a full kubectl command to execute by hand
Ctrl-R, fzf and tab completion work in the terminal drawer. But completion in the editor doesn't exist currently. Really good idea, however so let me look into it!
Good question. Main differences of Ledge: You don't need Emacs for those of us that don't use it already. Markdown instead of Org syntax. Shells are interactive by default. Mobile apps can run the shell/code.
Woooow! I love the idea of having documentation that I can just run directly as I'm reading through it, that also has a nice GUI to it.
There's a similar product called Atuin Desktop (https://github.com/atuinsh/desktop) that uses Tauri for the GUI and the performance is just abysmal (makes my pc fans spin up like crazy when I launch it and navigate around), and have been on a lookout for something that handles the GUI aspect better. Definitely going to try this out.
Jupyter is great. From what I recall it's bash kernel isn't a real terminal session so sudo prompts, top, etc can tend to get a bit wonky. I also have a preference towards Markdown over .ipynb.
This is all valid, but I'd suggest rethinking the slogan "The notebook that runs code" at the top of the README. I much prefer .md too and haven't used notebooks regularly in years, but nevertheless I scoffed when I read that (I thought: hasn't this guy heard of Jupyter?). I believe you'd be better off not calling this a "notebook" at all since that terms tends to describe something slightly different than what you have here.
In truth I think it was just the use of the definite article that got me. This is a notebook that runs code, not the notebook that runs code. I just think this is cool and it could be better differentiated.
Yes, strong Hammacher Schlemmer vibes. I noticed years ago that they try to make every product sound like the pinnacle by prefacing it with "The". Somewhat effective, until you catch on.
Scoffing and thinking "hasn't this guy heard of Jupyter" says more about your attitude than it does the tool or its README copy.
Hasn't this guy heard of [old product that is a huge pain and no one likes]? Why would he ever make something that suits his own interests and preferences?
Yes, exactly. I'm sharing with this creator what my initial knee-jerk reaction was, admittedly exaggerating a bit. In case he'd like to avoid other people having a similar reaction. (And indeed, he thanked me for my feedback.)
It seems like you think that pointing out that I'm sharing my attitude is some sort of gotcha, but I'm confused. Sharing one's attitude is the whole point of posting an internet comment, isn't it?
This is awesome I will definitely play around with it. Fits the niche gap as a standalone app vs something like [Observable Framework](https://observablehq.github.io/framework/) for data analytical type things.
I wish Notion could just integrate these things together and make it work, or someone build an Obsidian plugin. More often than not it would be so convenient to do something like this.
Awesome! Let me know how it goes.
add org-babel interop
Really love the project, it reminds me of a now dead xiki[1]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YufgfbUgEgI and xiki.org
I went to look at Atuin Desktop to see what the crossover was with this product, and it's fascinating to see that the repo was archived the day this was posted here!
https://github.com/atuinsh/desktop
Woah. I have no affiliation with Atuin so a coincidence I'm sure but really weird.
Kind of not surprised with the domination of Claude Code/Codex out there.
I feel like there has been a few takes on this (atuin desktop comes to mind[0] but apparently it's not a going concern anymore?) why hasn't it caught on?
0: https://github.com/atuinsh/desktop
I'm curious about this too. Org-babel, Jupyter, Atuin Desktop, etc. have explored similar ideas, but none became a mainstream way of working.
For people who used these tools long-term: what held them back? UX/accessibility, or do people simply prefer keeping documents separate from the actual work?
(hi! I worked a lot on atuin desktop)
we saw a bunch of issues with desktop, in no particular order
1. authoring runbooks is difficult, most people barely document their work let alone make it executable
2. keeping runbooks up to date is difficult, they are error-prone across systems
3. agents are now pretty good at a number of the tasks these ideas solve for, and are good at working around issues caused by docs becoming out of date/etc
all these tools are great for your own notes, but are very difficult to scale
Hey really appreciate that context! My thoughts:
1. Ledge's bet is it shouldn't feel like authoring at all. I've always had markdown docs chock full of commands and docs so making them runnable was the next logical step for me.
2. True. Keeping any kind of documentation up to date is difficult
3. Also true. I'm hoping Ledge's built-in agent support will bridge that gap and allow agents to help keep the docs up-to-date
And yes, a "Team" notebook is a challenge. Technically anyone with SSH access can all share a Ledge notebook. But that probably doesn't get us all the way there.
Thanks again for providing your thoughts. This by no means is a solved problem but I'm interested to see where it goes!
Thanks for answering. That's really interesting. Maybe agents flip this around. Instead of humans maintaining executable docs, the actual work generates the document. It could become something like a PR-style review layer for agent work. You don't necessarily need to understand the underlying code or tooling, but you can inspect what changed, why it changed, and approve or reject it. Do you think that would address any of the scaling problems you saw?
Very cool! I launched something similar as well. My idea was to create a working document in which people could develop their own tools and agents. Conversations with coding agents are treated as editable, executable documents. Both the person and the agent can write on the same page. Rather than correcting a mistake in a follow-up, you can rewrite it, delete a detour, or edit and re-run an earlier prompt. The file is always readable Markdown. Check out: https://piary.dev/
Feel free to get in touch if you are open to an exchange, you can find my contact details in the write-up.
Nice! I'll take a look.
As an Emacs user for over a decade I think this is brilliant, it solves my biggest gripes with org-babel which prevent me from using it in a team setting. Ledge is a lot like org-babel from Emacs, but for muggles: a familiar UI, and common format go a long way.
I wonder what would org-babel for team settings look like? Disk/interchange format seems less interesting than what gets shipped around and what the UX feels like.
Hey thanks! This gives me the motivation to keep on evolving this project :)
Love this concept, simple but brilliant idea with lots of utility. I think this can fit in a decent niche. I’ll give it a try!
cool idea, do you have any plans to integrate command generation with the shell completion / aliases / functions? Say I have tons of muscle memory on using ctrl-r fzf to get things from history, or on pressing tab to autocomplete pod names etc. so I would never write out a full kubectl command to execute by hand
Ctrl-R, fzf and tab completion work in the terminal drawer. But completion in the editor doesn't exist currently. Really good idea, however so let me look into it!
This is really cool, and I love the mobile support too! I’ll definitely be giving this a spin
Looks cool. I vibe coded this a while back to share some org docs on the web https://orgmode.dev/ - its currently a mess, but it does mostly work.
How does this compete to something like Org-mode?
Good question. Main differences of Ledge: You don't need Emacs for those of us that don't use it already. Markdown instead of Org syntax. Shells are interactive by default. Mobile apps can run the shell/code.
Woooow! I love the idea of having documentation that I can just run directly as I'm reading through it, that also has a nice GUI to it. There's a similar product called Atuin Desktop (https://github.com/atuinsh/desktop) that uses Tauri for the GUI and the performance is just abysmal (makes my pc fans spin up like crazy when I launch it and navigate around), and have been on a lookout for something that handles the GUI aspect better. Definitely going to try this out.
Great to hear! Hope it works well for you. Let me know if you hit any snags!
Years ago I just used Jupyter notebooks with a bash (or many others) backend to have a similar thing.
Jupyter is great. From what I recall it's bash kernel isn't a real terminal session so sudo prompts, top, etc can tend to get a bit wonky. I also have a preference towards Markdown over .ipynb.
This is all valid, but I'd suggest rethinking the slogan "The notebook that runs code" at the top of the README. I much prefer .md too and haven't used notebooks regularly in years, but nevertheless I scoffed when I read that (I thought: hasn't this guy heard of Jupyter?). I believe you'd be better off not calling this a "notebook" at all since that terms tends to describe something slightly different than what you have here.
Good feedback. Perhaps "Runnable markdown notes" instead of "The notebook that runs code".
In truth I think it was just the use of the definite article that got me. This is a notebook that runs code, not the notebook that runs code. I just think this is cool and it could be better differentiated.
Yes, strong Hammacher Schlemmer vibes. I noticed years ago that they try to make every product sound like the pinnacle by prefacing it with "The". Somewhat effective, until you catch on.
https://hammacher.com/
ha. Fair point. I'll work to soften it a bit. Not meaning to imply "first and only"
Scoffing and thinking "hasn't this guy heard of Jupyter" says more about your attitude than it does the tool or its README copy.
Hasn't this guy heard of [old product that is a huge pain and no one likes]? Why would he ever make something that suits his own interests and preferences?
Yes, exactly. I'm sharing with this creator what my initial knee-jerk reaction was, admittedly exaggerating a bit. In case he'd like to avoid other people having a similar reaction. (And indeed, he thanked me for my feedback.)
It seems like you think that pointing out that I'm sharing my attitude is some sort of gotcha, but I'm confused. Sharing one's attitude is the whole point of posting an internet comment, isn't it?