You have a tab open right now that you have been meaning to read for three weeks. You have a "Read Later" folder with 500 links you haven't touched...
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"You have a tab open right now that you have been meaning to read for three weeks. You have a "Read Later" folder with 500 links you haven't touched since 2023." - how did you know, are you clairvoyant? ;-)
My first instinct was to click the "Save to reading list" button on this article, but through immense willpower I constrained my index finger from going down, and moved the mouse pointer away from that button ...
For me the point is really that, instead of reading all those "important" articles, I get much more satisfaction (in addition to getting in shape) from going outside on a cycling trip, than spending even more hours than I already do sitting on a chair behind a computer monitor ;-)
Haha, you actually made the right call there. If it is a choice between a cycling trip and another tab, the bike wins every single time. The whole reason I built this was to spend less time feeling guilty about unread tabs and more time actually living. Hope the ride was good!
Rides are almost always good, except when I have a flat tyre or something like that - but building a fun and creative little project (like what you did in this case) isn't bad either!
Thanks! It was definitely a fun project to put together. Now I just need to make sure I spend as much time using it as I do building it. Enjoy the next ride!
Awesome tool! I have to admit I also keep saving things “to read later” and… somehow never get back to them.
And I love that thanks to the example article, immortal fame awaits me now 😂
Haha, you are definitely not alone in that. Most of us have that "save reflex" but forget to follow through. Glad you like the tool! It was fun using your piece as a placeholder for the demo.
You’re right — too often we add things to a reading list… and then never actually read them. I’ve taken a similar approach with Wallabag (which overlaps with your app in some ways), processing new entries each week through an LLM that sends me a summary of the content, emerging trends, and actionable levers. But I’m curious — I’m going to try your app; it looks interesting.
That setup sounds incredibly efficient for staying on top of news.
I actually went the exact opposite direction intentionally. I found that when I read AI summaries, I felt productive but didn't actually retain the deep knowledge. So I built this to force myself to slow down and read the full text. But for high-volume processing, your workflow is definitely a beast.
I used your tool everyday. My feeling: interesting, but there's a bug when I attempt to mark an article as reviewed. As I said before, readind in Sigilla is very easy and pleasant, with a widget and bugs resolved, it will be a great tool.
Daily use is the best feedback I can get.
I am looking into the review bug right now. Does it hang on the loading state or just fail silently?
I want to get that core loop perfect before I ship the widget.
In fact, when I click on 'Mark Reviewed', a popup appears: 'Failed to schedule review' - so I have to archive or to skip.
Found and fixed the "Failed to schedule review" bug!
The issue was an ambiguous column reference in the database function.
It's now fixed and deployed.
Try again, now it should work. Im super thankful for all the feedback you are giving me!
Interesting — I just checked out Sigilla and I like the philosophy behind it. The privacy-first angle and the idea of building a personal research library you actually remember feels very aligned with the ‘slow reading’ approach you described.
I think there’s probably a nice complementarity between our two approaches: mine helps me scan and prioritize at scale, and yours seems designed to create real retention and depth. I’m curious to see how it changes the way I read once I start using it more intentionally.
I really appreciate that. "Slow reading" is a tough sell in a world obsessed with speed, so I’m glad the philosophy resonated with you.
Please do let me know how it goes. Since you have such a structured process already, your feedback on the retention mechanics would be super valuable.
First attempt: pleasant and clean interface, I love it. Saving an article is simple, but a Chrome/Android widget would be nice… Highlights and notes work well and are an interesting aspect of reading. Reading an article in Sigilla is really great, no ads, no distracting elements on the page… a bit like reading in read-only mode :)
Only drawback: doesn't work with Medium (well, Medium is a bit rubbish), even with the free reading links.
Glad you like the clean interface! That distraction-free environment is the core of the app.
A Chrome extension is actually the next big feature I am planning to ship. I agree that saving needs to be instant.
Regarding Medium: It is the final boss of read-later apps. Since they lock down their content so heavily, it is very hard to get a clean scrape even with free links. I decided to prioritize open web articles for the beta, but I appreciate the feedback!
Regarding Medium: Wallabag captures pages when I use its widget; that might be the missing piece. Otherwise, you can look at how they do it – that's the method I use when I can't find a solution myself.
That’s a great point. I suspect Wallabag sends the actual HTML from the browser instead of just the link, which is a clever way to get around those pesky bot blockers.
I'll definitely check out their method. It seems like the best way to handle "walled gardens" like Medium without fighting their scrapers constantly. Really appreciate the tip!
This is an unhelpful overgeneralization.
You're probably right. It's definitely a bit of a rant based on my own bad habits and what I see in my bubble. I know some people are incredibly disciplined with their bookmarks, but for the rest of us hoarders, the struggle is very real.
My bookmarks include Google Translate, GitHub, casual-effects, and CMU Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database. I don't know if the last two sites will be useful, but it's better to let them remain forgotten in my bookmarks. Perhaps if I hadn't read this article, I wouldn't have even remembered them. Moreover, I had already forgotten where my bookmarks were in Brave, so I had to search on Google how to open bookmarks in Brave (shortcut - Ctrl + Shift + O). Surprisingly, saving bookmarks is easier (ctrl+D) than opening them. I'll bookmark my comment so I don't forget the shortcut, lol.
You actually nailed the core design flaw right there. Browsers made saving frictionless (Ctrl+D) but retrieval a hassle. It is literally an interface designed for hoarding. And bookmarking your own comment to remember the shortcut is honestly the perfect meta-joke to illustrate the problem.
I know that feeling well. Eventually, you just have to declare bankruptcy and hit "mark all as read" to save your sanity. I basically tried to build that "mark all as read" logic directly into the tool so I don't have to feel guilty about the pile anymore.
The fragmentation point someone raised above is huge. Reading lists scattered across Dev.to, Medium, LinkedIn, YouTube Watch Later, podcast queues — it's the same hoarding instinct across every medium, not just articles.
What helped me was flipping the model entirely: instead of saving content to consume "later," I started producing content about the topics I cared about. Writing a newsletter forces you to actually synthesize what you've read. Recording a quick podcast episode about a topic cements it way better than a bookmark ever could.
I've been using giv1.com for this — it handles both newsletters and podcasts in one place, so the workflow is: find something interesting, write or record your take on it, publish. The content you create becomes the "proof" that you actually learned something, and your audience holds you accountable to keep showing up.
The Collector's Fallacy dies the moment you shift from consumer to creator. You stop saving everything because you only need material for what you're actively writing about.
Shift from consumer to creator is the only thing that actually cures the hoarding. You are right.
The friction is just so much higher. Sometimes I just want to learn without the pressure of publishing a take on it immediately.
This really resonates. The “digital cemetery” line is painfully accurate — I’ve definitely been guilty of confusing saving with learning. I love the resurfacing + spaced repetition angle. That’s real product thinking, not just another bookmark wrapper. And choosing Supabase + React with a privacy-first flow shows solid architectural judgment.
A couple of practical notes from testing it:
1️⃣ When I click “Continue with Google”, I’m getting:
This usually means Google isn’t enabled in Supabase → Authentication → Providers, or the OAuth credentials (Client ID / Secret) aren’t configured correctly. Worth double-checking:
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URLandNEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEYare correct in production2️⃣ Some Supabase flows feel unstable (auth/session persistence + route refresh issues). I’d suggest:
supabase.auth.getSession()on app init to verify hydrationpersistSession: truein client config3️⃣ Also, refreshing on non-
/routes returns the default Vercel 404. You should add a SPA rewrite invercel.json:Overall though — the core idea is strong. The product philosophy is clear. Tightening auth, routing, and Supabase config will make it feel production-grade instead of prototype-level. You’re close — just needs some hardening.
Thanks for the catch on the Vercel rewrites. I completely missed that for the SPA routing, I will get that fixed today. Really glad you liked the line about moving URLs to database rows. It is a trap I fell into for years before I realized I was just hoarding data.
Love that mindset — the fact that you’re fixing things quickly already says a lot about how seriously you’re taking this 👍
And honestly, we’ve all fallen into that hoarding trap. The difference is you actually built something to counter it.
One more thing — apart from the Vercel rewrite, I’d strongly recommend double-checking the Supabase auth setup. The
Unsupported provider: provider is not enablederror usually means Google isn’t enabled in the Supabase dashboard or the OAuth credentials / redirect URLs don’t match exactly in production. It might also be worth verifying:SUPABASE_URL,ANON_KEY) are correct in VercelThese small auth/config inconsistencies can make the product feel unstable even when the core idea is solid — and your core idea is solid. Keep going — this is the kind of focused, thoughtful tool more developers need.
This is incredibly helpful. I am actually looking into the Google Auth config right now, it is likely a redirect URL mismatch between my local environment and the Vercel production build. Thanks for the detailed checklist, it makes debugging much faster. Really appreciate you taking the time to dig into this!
You’re most welcome 🙌
Honestly, it’s just part of being a developer — if we spot bugs or edge cases, we help fix them. That’s how good products get built.
Really glad the checklist helped speed things up. Keep shipping 🚀
Couldn't agree more. Thanks again for the help, it really made the launch day much smoother. Cheers!
The spaced repetition angle is what makes this actually interesting. Most "read later" tools optimize for saving speed, not for recall — so you end up with a perfectly organized graveyard. Forcing a "read or delete" decision is a smart constraint.
Honest answer to your question: 4 tabs, but they've been there so long they're basically roommates at this point.
We made the "Save" button so easy that we forgot to build the "Read" button.
And I love the roommates analogy. The real question is: are they paying rent in your head? If not, it might be time to serve them an eviction notice.
Thanks for the laugh!
just like Watch Later and now i have more videos in this than my entire watch history
Haha, its so easy to just press that "watch later" button
adds this post to save for reading later
haha classic!
Your "Collector's Fallacy" frame is useful—but I'd push it further. The problem isn't just that saving feels like learning. It's that queuing feels like committing.
Most people treat their read-later list as a vault for unrealized selves—a mausoleum of intentions. Articles saved in the hope that a future version of them will be wiser, more disciplined, more spacious. I don't operate that way. My list stays small because I don't outsource intention to a queue. If something enters my field, it's because it already belongs to the arc I'm walking.
This isn't productivity. It's governance.
I don't begin a project without a completion boundary. I don't save a link unless I know when I'll read it. I don't treat "later" as an expansion of capacity. My practice: if it matters, it gets a slot. If it doesn't get a slot, it doesn't matter.
This is how I maintain continuity. Not by hoarding potential, but by honoring capacity. Not by collecting inputs, but by curating a lineage I can actually finish. My read-later list isn't a graveyard because nothing enters it without a covenant.
"Mausoleum of intentions" is a brilliant phrase. You nailed the psychological trap—we often save links for the person we aspire to be, rather than the person we actually are.
That shift from productivity to governance is exactly what I am trying to automate. Since most of us lack that internal discipline to strictly slot every link, I built the decay algorithm to act as that external boundary. It enforces the "covenant" you mention—if you do not honor the slot within a set timeframe, the system decides it did not matter and removes it.
Great insight on capacity versus potential. I will be using that framing going forward.
Saving this for later 😆
Haha 😂
I've realized my Read Later list is more like a safety net than a helpful tool. It's time for me to either delete the links or actually read them
That safety net analogy is perfect. We often save things just to alleviate the fear of missing out, rather than to actually learn from them.
Making that hard decision to read or delete is the only way to actually clear the backlog.
True, and 100% of the time I never really read any of them
Gemini said
That 100% figure is brutal but honest. It is aspirational saving. We save for the person we want to be, but then reality gets in the way.
Mass deleting them feels surprisingly good.
The " Collector's Fallacy " is so real in our industry. We hoard links like trophies when only practice actually matters. I love the " Resurrection Engine "concept : ask us to delete what we’ll never read is almost therapeutic. Are you planning to add an export option to keep a log of our readings in the long run ?
We mistake the bookmark for the knowledge. Regarding export: Absolutely. The goal is to help you learn, not to lock your data away. I am planning a simple export (probably JSON or Markdown) so you can keep a permanent log of what you have actually finished.
I have way too many tabs to count aha. I started grouping them by labels which makes it even worse... You are tackling a real problem here!
I have been there too. Grouping them feels like progress, but it usually just turns a messy pile into a tidy archive that we still never look at. Sometimes the best thing is to just admit we will never read them and close the tabs.
This is a great post. I like your approach to solving the "read later" graveyard. I found a similar solution through automation.
My method sends articles directly to my e-ink device. Reading on it helps me focus and reduces distractions. It even improved my sleep routine, so I get to read more and sleep better.
I built an automation for this. I save an article to an iCloud folder that syncs to S3. A Lambda function then converts it to an EPUB and sends it straight to my Kindle. I also added an AI step that summarizes the article and highlights key points. My work on this inspired me to contribute to an open-source EPUB conversion project.
I am happy to write a blog post explaining the setup if others find it useful.
An automation like this in Sigilla would be great. Imagine saving an article and having it appear on your Kindle, reMarkable, or any e-reader. That would be a nice combination.
You are spot on about the e-ink aspect. Removing the browser from the equation entirely is probably the best way to ensure deep reading.
I would 100% read a blog post breaking down that architecture, especially how you handled the HTML-to-EPUB conversion reliability. Please drop the link here when you write it!
As for Sigilla: A "Sync to Kindle" feature is a brilliant idea. Since the project is open source, and you seem to have already solved the hard part (the conversion logic), it would be amazing to look into how we could integrate something like that.
Thanks so much for the encouragement 🙌
My setup uses Python for the Lambda function, along with the
boto3library to interact with S3 and send content to Kindle. For HTML-to-EPUB conversion, I rely on the open-sourcexml2epublibrary, which has worked reliably for me.It’s great to hear that Sigilla is open source. Would you mind sharing the repository link? I’d love to take a look at the codebase, see which language it’s built in, and understand its structure.
Depending on the stack and organization, I’d be happy to start thinking about how I could contribute.
It is basically a garbage collector for my reading list. If the link is not being referenced/read, the system frees up the memory. No hard feelings.
Great thread — and honestly, this hits home.
I think most of us are guilty of treating our “Read Later” list like a digital bookshelf we intend to get to… someday. But the reality is, the more we save, the less we actually read. It becomes noise, not knowledge.
What I’ve realized is that saving an article gives us the same dopamine hit as reading it — without any of the actual learning. We feel productive in the moment, but the content just piles up.
Lately, I’ve started treating my reading list like an inbox: if I don’t read it within 48 hours, I either delete it or process it into notes. If it’s not worth consuming now, it’s probably not worth keeping at all.
Curious how others here are managing this — especially those of you balancing dev content, newsletters, and long-form essays. Are you team “aggressive delete” or do you have a system that actually works?
"If it’s not worth consuming now, it’s probably not worth keeping." That is a hard truth to accept, but it's 100 percent correct. Most of what we save is just FOMO in disguise. I built Sigilla because I realized my "system" was just hoarding, and I needed the tool to be the one to tell me to delete the junk.
Gemini said
This post is the digital equivalent of a "minimalist wardrobe" intervention, and I am here for it.
We’ve all been seduced by the Collector’s Fallacy—that seductive lie that hitting "Cmd+D" is basically the same as downloading the information directly into our prefrontal cortex. It’s not. It’s just clutter that eventually turns into "intellectual debt" every time we look at our bookmarks and feel that slight twinge of guilt.
The "Resurrection Engine" idea is brilliant because it addresses the actual bottleneck of learning: friction. We don't read the articles because they’re buried. Bringing them back and forcing a "Keep or Delete" decision is exactly the kind of aggressive curation we need to keep our digital spaces from becoming junkyards.
Also, as a dev, I really appreciate the stable stack choice. Using Supabase + React and keeping the analytics local isn't just a privacy flex—it’s a commitment to longevity. It means the tool is built to actually be used, not just to scale for some eventual (and probably privacy-invasive) exit strategy.
I currently have 42 tabs open, and honestly, your post just convinced me to close at least 30 of them. Sometimes "Read Later" really just means "Never," and it's time we admitted that.
Intellectual debt is the perfect way to describe it. That little twinge of guilt every time you see a bookmark folder is exactly what I wanted to get rid of. Glad to hear it inspired you to close those 30 tabs, that is a massive win in itself.
Truth bomb. My Pocket has 1,247 tabs—digital hoarding at its finest.
The fix that works:
Read-later lists prey on "future me" optimism. Future you has the same problems as now you.
Deleted 800 tabs last weekend. Freedom tastes better than FOMO.
What's your graveyard size? 🪦
"Future me optimism" is exactly it. We always assume we will have more energy tomorrow.
My graveyard was over 2000 links deep before I built the tool to handle the nuking for me.
That feeling of hitting zero is better than any article I might have missed.
2000 OMG!
I too sense that feeling after hitting ZERO Read Later's
I went through the same thing last year. Had like 200+ bookmarks in Chrome and one day I just nuked them all. Felt weirdly liberating.
What changed for me was switching to a "process now or lose it" mindset. If I find something interesting, I take 2 minutes to skim it and write one sentence about why it matters. If I can't do that, it gets closed. No saving for later.
The spaced repetition angle is interesting though — that's basically Anki for articles. Do you find people actually come back when it resurfaces, or do they just hit "skip" repeatedly until it auto-deletes?
Nuking the list is honestly the best feeling.
The skip button acts as a filter. If you skip an article 3 times, you are basically admitting you wont read it. The app just helps you delete it at that point.
It separates what you actually care about from the clutter.
It's a nightmare, Once I put it on a read later I either don't come back or just close it which is why I now have a special and dedicated time for reading and studying. Works every time 💯
Time blocking is the only way. If you wait for free time it never happens.
I use the app exactly for that slot. It keeps the queue clean so I do not waste time filtering when I finally sit down.
This resonates more than I expected.
We’ve optimized for saving, not for learning.
The resurfacing concept is powerful because it introduces friction — and friction is often what real learning needs.
I’ve been experimenting with structured state-driven systems in my own projects recently, and I’m starting to believe that “forced decisions” are underrated in product design.
Would love to see how your engagement scoring evolves over time.
Exactly. We treat friction as a dirty word in product design, but for this specific problem, it is the feature, not a bug.
The scoring is still pretty raw, but the goal is to differentiate between "skimming" and "absorbing."
great post and idea. Thanks for sharing this post and the tool indeed.
Thanks for reading!
this project has been added to "try later" list 😂
actually im facing the same issue but with open source projects, i have ton of them on my waitlist, lately i found that programmers should actually be day people rather than night owls, it helped me putting my life back on track, read more, go out and focus more on what matters..
The irony of adding this to a "try later" list is perfect.
I agree on the schedule shift. Night coding feels productive, but the morning is where the actual clarity happens.
This hits home. I realized a while ago that my 'Read Later' list was just where good ideas went to die, so I changed my workflow: I stop and read it now. I take notes, leave a reply to cement the logic, and move on. If I can't commit the time immediately, I usually admit I never will and let the link go.
That said, the 'Resurrection Engine' is genius. Most apps act as 'black holes,' but bringing spaced repetition to long-form content actually forces the brain to engage. Forcing a 'Read it or Delete it' decision is the exact friction we need to stop hoarding.
Huge respect for the privacy-first approach and the 'boring' (stable) stack, too.
"Where good ideas go to die" is such a perfect way to put it. That is exactly what I wanted to fix.
Your approach of reading things immediately is definitely the goal. I built Sigilla as a backup for when that is not possible, adding just enough friction to stop those links from becoming a black hole.
Glad you like the stack too. Keeping it simple is the only way to stay sane as a solo developer.
The webpage never loads
Thanks for pointing that out, a typo was the problem. Now it works!
after read this i go bookmark tab. and boooom many article there and don't know why i save them lol
haha, that is the classic "why did I save this?" moment. It happens because we lose the context of why it was interesting in the first place.
That realization is the first step to actually clearing it out.
This is an I can relate to. I have several papers I'm needing to read, but I have been procrastinating. Thanks for the post @the_nortern_dev .
Thank you for reading Zack!
5 tabls
Nicely done! I'll give Sigilla a go
Thank you Viktor!
I actually built a github actions workflow that syncs the reading list from devto to GitHub repo (if you remove anything from the reading list here, it gets synced) along with the time to read each blog.
In reality though, it didn’t help that much lol. that's why I just open the blogs, read them and comment right there. Otherwise, there’s a 99.99% chance I will never open them again.
I stopped using "Read Later" lists when I realized something uncomfortable - half of what I saved quietly became obsolete before I ever opened it.
So I deleted the whole list.
Now, if I truly need to learn something, I search for the most recent publications with good reviews. It forces me to learn intentionally, not just hoard links.
Turns out, "Read Later" means "Probably Never"
When I saw the title it reminded me I had an IT tabgroup I haven't opened in weeks. So i opened it deleted the pages I wasn't going to read, skimmed through the ones I wanted to get the jest of and moved the pages I wanted to read out of group in full sight.
I'm someone who can't stand that the tabsbar is scrollable so it is read or delete very quickly when the tabs are in full sight.
I stopped with link hoarding when Delecious got into troubles. After that my mindset changed to mostly read now or never.
Battling distractions is a never ending game. Finding strategies is a journey that starts but never ends due to constant adaptation. I like the concept, and I don't want to be a buzzkill , really, but I have found after using a lot of apps, that friction and habit building is key. I ended up having a list of links in my apple notes app, and yeah I sometimes go back to it, whenever I'm to exhausted to code, or to do something productive I read instead (sometimes I'm too tired to even read lol), I find that to be the optimal way :)
Two things about your app: to me privacy bears very little importance when it comes to personal knowledge building, I don't care if a multinational or a start up is aware that I'm learning about buddhism or quantum physics that's not going to impact my life, I am not that important , and I will probably end up in some statistics graph. I understand that this is a personal preference and other people my object to it.
Secondly I don't understand the concept of Resurrection Engine, it perhaps needs a little more description.
I like the UI, it's inviting. Good luck with your project.
I currently have over 40 articles saved in my "read later" list on dev.to. Additionally, I have another 12 articles on daily.dev and close to 20 on LinkedIn. The number of saved articles on Medium.com is even higher. I typically add articles to my reading list if I find them interesting, educational, or potentially useful in the future.
That fragmentation is the real killer. When your reading list is scattered across dev.to, LinkedIn, and Medium, it is almost impossible to ever feel "done".
That "potentially useful" mindset is exactly how I ended up with thousands of unread tabs. Bringing them all into one single inbox was the only way I could actually start reading (or deleting) them.
Many of us experience this significant pain point. Developing a solution that integrates all these scattered elements in one place is indeed a fantastic idea.
Thank you!
Awesome tool! I will try it today.
I like to contribute, unfortunately I have 0 money but a lot of free time. Are you planing to open the project to allow contributions? There is no link to a repo, so I suspect it is a private project
Looks like interesting article. Saving this to my "Reading List"
Haha, I knew this comment was coming. See you in the digital graveyard.
I have thousands of screenshots on my phone.