Scan's leaflet

How I Came Up with Margin

February 11, 2026

Introduction

A couple of months ago, I had an idea: what if I built my own AT Protocol app?

I was browsing atproto app directories and thought: what if I made something like Hypothes.is, but more social and feature-rich?

That idea became Margin.

v0.1

The initial design focused on annotating, highlighting, bookmarking, and collecting content.

I liked the concept, so I started building it.

Once the app was fairly usable, I announced it, and the word spread fast. People were excited about a new AT Protocol app, which gave me a huge motivation boost.

Margin's avatar
Margin
1mo

Introducing Margin Write on the margins of the internet, powered by the AT Protocol. Coming soon

A few days later, I started invite-only pre-testing. Features were tested, bugs were found, and eventually, The first version of Margin was released.

Browser Extension

With support from the community, I was able to fund a Chrome Developer account and started working on the Margin browser extension.

It began as a simple, raw extension with no framework, but later we migrated to wxt.dev to make it more modular and maintainable.

Margin's avatar
Margin
1w

v0.2.0 is here! The biggest update to our extension yet, now using wxt.dev Changelogs: - New UI and better UX. - Shortcuts for opening the sidebar, highlighting/annotating selected text, and bookmarking a page. - More amazing bug fixes and features Now available for Firefox, soon to be in Chrome

Next-gen Web Extension Framework – WXT

Next-gen Web Extension Framework – WXT

WXT provides the best developer experience, making it quick, easy, and fun to develop web extensions. With built-in utilities for building, zipping, and publishing your extension, it's easy to get sta...


https://wxt.dev

The AT Protocol has been really fun to work with, and interoperability with Semble showed how powerful it can be.

Conclusion

That’s how Margin came to life, through feedback, feature requests, and community support.

I’m excited to see where Margin goes next.

If you want to support development, you can donate on Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/scan

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