Our tiny manual! Leaflet's simple, so we made a version that takes less than a minute to read :)

Quick to make

Go to leaflet.pub to make a new doc — no account needed

If you do sign in, we'll save your docs to your home

Easy to share

Copy a view only link, or an edit link to invite collaborators

Block editor

Add rich text, images, subpages, links, embeds & more

Use headers, highlights, even foldable lists / checklists

One page, or many

Add subpages as needed, and open them side by side

Pages can be linear documents or visual canvases

Custom themes

More detail, for those who like to know about all the pieces & how they fit together…

Leaflet is a block-based document editor — you can create docs with no account needed, and share them just as easily

When you do make an account, we'll sync all your docs seamlessly across any device

Docs start with a single page; you can add as many pages as you like, including canvas pages

Leaflet is collaborative at its core; anyone with the edit link can add or change things

Block menu: hit "+" from an empty block or type "/" for the full block menu

Editor toolbar: format text and find other block options from the bottom toolbar while editing

Text options include bold, italic, strikethrough, highlight, headers, alignment, and lists

Other blocks can be moved, deleted, or locked

Doc options: live in the sidebar (desktop) or footer (mobile)

Share (paper airplane): to copy either the edit link (to send collaborators) or view link (for anyone to read)

Theme (paintbrush): customize your doc's color scheme: page, text, accent colors…even backgroung image!

About (question mark): more useful links & shortcuts

Home: see all your docs — log in to sync across devices; otherwise saved per-device/browser in localstorage

By publishing to atproto, you can tap into a social network and ecosystem that makes all kinds of apps and experiences possible.

Social features on Leaflet include:

Comments

Quotes — social sharing on Bluesky! a way to highlight and post excerpts from Leaflet publications to Bluesky, to share love & start conversations!

Subscriptions — subscribe to publications via atproto (as well as RSS) and view in Reader, or our Bluesky feeds

Reader

Mentions — @-mentions! Bluesky accounts, Leaflet publications, specific posts and more to come — an interface for links across the atmosphere

Profile pages — with bio, publications, posts, comments, and subscriptions

Notifications — in-app notifications for post comments, replies, new publication subscribers and more

Post tags — simple global tags for Leaflet posts, to help writers and communities coordinate and find each other

Social publishing for blogs, newsletters & more

Publications are built on the AT Protocol, which powers Bluesky, to publish your data openly & enable things like comments, discovery, and (soon!) memberships across the open social graph.

Connect your Bluesky/atproto account from leaflet.pub/home

Make a new publication — you can make as many as you like

Make draft posts, and when you're ready, hit publish!

Your publication data lives on your PDS — same place your Bluesky data lives, open and under your control.

custom domains — by default you can use a Leaflet subdomain…but you can also add a custom domain you own!

subscribing to publications — readers can subscribe and follow via custom Bluesky feed (or RSS); email coming soon

theming options — to give your pubs a unique look and feel

sharing quotes — via Bluesky or as embeds in other pubs

pub settings — choose to show comments, quotes, and prev/next buttons, or hide from Discover/Reader

edit date and tags — additional options for post meta

cover images — select an image for social share previews

In addition to blogs, you can also publish standalone Leaflet posts to AT Protocol!

Docs, drafts, publications, looseleafs — what are all the things I can make in Leaflet?

Any Leaflet can be a shareable doc (unlisted by default), or a draft you can publish to AT Protocol for social features like comments, discovery, and more

From home, make a new doc, or a canvas for a more visual page; you can add either page type as a subpage as well

Share a view or edit link for others to access

Publish to either a publication, or one-off as a Looseleaf

What kinds of things can I post on Leaflet?

You can add all the basics — text, images, links — and paste in Markdown (most things should just work!)

We don't support uploading media directly, but you can add things like YouTube videos as embeds

Many other block types too, hit / in the editor to see and try them all!

How much can I customize my docs and blogs?

We have lots of theme options, like colors, bg image, and max page width; font options coming soon

No way yet to fully customize CSS and layouts; for ultimate control you make way to make your own website and publish to the Atmosphere via standard.site

Is there an easy way to export from Leaflet?

We don't yet have built in export tools, but published post data lives in your PDS, and there are community-made experimental tools for things like Markdown import / export (e.g. Noteleaf)

We'd love to hear more about how you'd like to use Leaflet! Directions we'd like to explore more include…

Expressive docs — new block types like audio, file uploads, or tables; options for things like fonts, export, and block actions

Social publishing — expressive ways to share and respond to docs and posts, in particular with publications

Specific to our new publishing features, built on atproto, there's a lot we'd like to add:

Subscription options, so readers can get updates via email, or perhaps directly via Bluesky / atproto

Social features, building on existing features like quotes and comments, to make Leaflet more useful for communities

Monetization, e.g. Substack or Patreon style memberships

Please send us a note if you have thoughts on what would make Leaflet more fun, more powerful, or better for whatever particular ways you're looking to use it!

Leaflet is a project from Hyperlink Academy, a school–software studio–research lab making tools for learning and collaboration.

We're a team of three based in Brooklyn, NY and we've been working on Leaflet since mid-2024.

We're exploring some fun directions for Leaflet; see the previous page for more detail!

For our NYC friends, we sometimes host writing sessions, bringing people together to draft & publish particular types of docs…like manifestos, recipes, or poems.

We share updates every couple weeks to our email list. You can also view our repos on Tangled and GitHub for WIP issues & known bugs.

If you have any questions or feedback please reach out :)

Leaflet is a new product and at this stage there's inherent uncertainty about it's long-term future. That said, we place a lot of importance on stability and peace of mind for the documents we create.

While we can't guarantee zero bugs or infinite lifespan, we can make the following commitment to you. If the hosted Leaflet app (leaflet.pub) shuts down in the future, we'll provide:

at least six months notice before switching to read-only, and at least twelve months of hosting read-only documents

a way to download Leaflets (JSON file + attachments) that can be imported into a self-hosted version of the app (source here)

There's more we'd like to do, like additional export options, but this feels like a reasonable baseline! Please reach out with any questions.

Brendan, Jared, & Celine

~

update log