Inkwell is a personal OS for makers who juggle a day job, freelance clients, and side projects — without losing the plot. Tasks, time, money, habits, journal, and a quiet AI sidekick on every page.
Job, freelance, side projects — Inkwell holds the whole shape of your work. Tasks, time, costs, docs, notes, prompts. No more 9 tabs to remember what you're working on.
Habits, mood, energy, deep-work hours — quietly logged, then surfaced. Patterns you didn't notice become obvious. Tuesdays really do drag.
Every client gets a polished read-only portal — progress, hours, invoices, proof-of-work captures. Less status-update emails, more trust.
Drag-and-drop creation, milestones, files, team, notes, prompts, and a built-in client portal. Whether it's your day job, a freelance gig, or your indie passion project — they all live side by side.
A timer that knows which project it's for. Billable vs internal, weekly grids, idle nudges, screen-shot proof-of-work. Invoices auto-generate from tracked hours.
Daily check-ins for mood, energy, sleep. Habits with streaks and a 53-week heatmap. Recurring self-improvement goals. A handwritten journal that's actually a pleasure to fill in.
Each client gets a read-only portal with progress, hours, invoices, and shared docs. Auto-redacted from internal notes, journal, and GitHub. No more 'just sending a status update'.
Describe a project — Inkwell drafts it. Ask for your weekly review — Inkwell writes it. Run out of words in your journal — Inkwell prompts you. Never feels like talking to a chatbot. Just feels like help.
A graph of projects ↔ tasks ↔ notes ↔ tags. Spot what's overloaded. Realize that 'AI' tag spans three projects. Find a forgotten note from January.
Start free forever. Upgrade only when you're winning.
| Inkwell | Notion | Linear | Toggl | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projects + tasks + sub-tasks | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — |
| Time tracking + billing | ✓ | — | — | ✓ |
| Habits + mood + journal | ✓ | ~ | — | — |
| Client portals (read-only) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| AI project assistant | ✓ | ~ | — | — |
| Mind-map / graph view | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Auto-invoices from hours | ✓ | — | — | ~ |
| Hand-drawn, calming UI | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Built for one person, not 50 | ✓ | — | — | — |
I tried Notion, Linear, Toggl, three habit apps. Inkwell replaced all five. My Sunday review now takes 10 minutes instead of 90.
The client portals alone paid for the year. My freelance clients stopped emailing 'just checking in' three times a week.
It looks like nothing else I use. I actually want to open it in the morning. That's not a small thing.
Built for one — that's the point. Studio plan adds up to 5 collaborators for small studios, but it's never going to be a 50-seat product. There are plenty of those.
We use a privacy-routed model for personal data (journals, habits) — never used for training. The project assistant uses your context only when you ask. You can fully disable AI in settings.
Yes. One-click importers for Notion pages, Linear issues, and Toggl time logs. We map structures intelligently — you'll review before anything writes.
You always own it. Full Markdown + JSON export, including attachments, at any time. We never lock you in.
iOS/Android quick-capture apps are in private beta — focused on capture, voice memos, and habit check-ins. The full app stays browser-based for now.
A Docker self-host image ships with the Studio plan. Source-available license — see /handbook for details.
Because the tools we used before felt like dashboards. Dashboards make you anxious. Notebooks invite you in. We chose calm over slick.