How I Came Up with Margin

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.

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.

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