A quiet place to write.
At any length.

Scrawl is a minimalist, self-contained publishing platform for two kinds of writing: quick thoughts (posts) and long-form pieces (articles). It bundles everything you need — writing, publishing, rich text editing, threading, moderation, search, RSS, SEO, and export — into one clean, distraction-free space.

It's a focused writing tool, not a social network. There are no follower counts, likes, comment streaks, ads, or analytics dashboards. Your content is clean, indexable, and yours. The emphasis is on writing and meaningful discussion — not engagement metrics.

No. Everything is handled through a simple web interface. You write in a plain text box for posts or a rich text editor for articles, hit publish, and it's live. No HTML, CSS, or technical setup required.

Just sign up and start writing. On first launch you set an owner password (this protects publishing, editing, and moderating). From there, the home page gives you a text box for a quick post — type and hit "Post". Articles are created from the articles section with the rich text composer.

A post is a quick, title-less thought — plain text, published instantly, no formatting. An article is a longer piece with a title, a rich text editor (bold, italic, headings, lists, quotes, code), draft support, and optional backdating. Think of posts as micro-thoughts and articles as long-form essays.

No. There's no limit on the number of posts or articles, and no character limit on individual entries. Write as much as you want.

Yes. As the owner you can edit any post or article (subject to your password). Deleting uses a simple two-step confirm pattern so you don't remove something by accident. Deleting an article also cleans up its comments.

Backdating is available for articles via the article editor (picked from a date field, for example when importing older writing). Posts snap to the current time when published. Articles support it because imported long-form content often needs a historical date.

Posts longer than 280 characters are collapsed on the feed with a click-to-expand to keep the page scannable. There's also a live word and character counter while you type.

Yes. Scrawl is built for both. Quick, title-less posts for instant thoughts, and long-form articles with a full rich text editor for deeper writing — all in the same clean space.

The rich text editor supports bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, inline code, hyperlinks, H2 and H3 headings, numbered and bullet lists, blockquotes, horizontal rules, and line breaks. There's also an HTML source mode for pasting or editing raw HTML.

Yes. Articles can be saved as drafts and published later. Drafts are only visible to you (the owner), and the articles list has a filter to show all, published, or drafts. Unpublished articles display an amber "edit draft" action.

Yes. One click converts a published article back to draft status (hidden from the public). You can re-publish it any time. Unpublishing never deletes your content.

Yes. The editor has unsaved-changes protection — navigating away while you have unsaved edits triggers a confirmation so you don't lose work. Pasting content is also sanitized to strip external fonts/styling while preserving allowed formatting.

Absolutely. Every reader comment requires your approval before it becomes public. From the moderation page you can approve, delete, and reply with one click. Owner comments are auto-approved and appear immediately.

Yes. Both posts and articles support threaded comments — readers can reply to each other, building conversation trees with visual connectors. Replies are capped at 4 levels of indentation to keep mobile readable.

Any visitor can comment without creating an account. Readers enter a "Discuss as" name, cached in their browser. Comments are held for moderation by default, so you stay in control of your space.

No — comments cannot be edited once posted (readers see a hint about this). This keeps the discussion stable and accountable. You, as the owner, can still approve or delete any comment.

Deleting an article also removes all its associated comments. Deleting a parent comment removes all its nested replies. So cleanup stays consistent.

The menu shows a pending-comments count (e.g., "comments (3)") when you're logged in as the owner. The moderation page lists them all, each linking to the source post or article for context.

Yes. Full-text search (SQLite FTS) works across both posts and articles with multi-word prefix matching and relevance ranking. Results are grouped (articles vs posts). It's accessible via the search icon or the / keyboard shortcut.

Yes. A post archive organizes entries by year and month, so visitors can browse your history over time. There's also a "random post" feature (a dice icon) for surfacing older content.

On the home feed, press N to focus the new-post box, / to open search, and Escape to close search. The article editor also supports Ctrl/Cmd+B (bold), I (italic), U (underline), and more.

Yes. Scrawl has a light theme (default) and a true pitch-black dark theme for late-night writing. Your preference is saved in the browser, and it respects your device's dark-mode setting on first visit.

Yes, all from a single Settings page. You can change the blog title, the owner display name (shown on your comments), the footer/copyright text (with basic formatting), and more — updates apply instantly without a refresh.

The landing page is what visitors see at the root URL. You can choose between the Posts feed, the Articles list, or a fully custom landing page built with the same rich text editor. You can enable or disable Posts and Articles independently.

Yes. With a custom landing page you can build an introduction, welcome section, or any content using the rich text editor, complete with headings, lists, and links. Posts and articles remain reachable from the menu regardless.

Yes. There are auto-discoverable RSS feeds for posts (/feed/posts) and articles (/feed/articles), so readers can subscribe in any feed reader. Feed links are also in the menu.

Yes. Every post and article includes Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags (title, description, URL, author, published time) and an og:image banner. Sharing on X/Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Telegram, and others produces a clean card preview.

Yes. Scrawl is fully indexable (index, follow) with canonical URLs, a dynamic sitemap (/sitemap.xml), and a JSON API (/api/posts) for machine discovery.

Yes. Every post and article has actions to copy the raw text, copy the permalink, and open a permanent link. Articles also have a native share button (Web Share API) on supported devices.

You do. Always. Your posts and articles belong entirely to you, and you can export everything as Markdown at any time — there's no lock-in and no platform claim over your words.

Yes. The owner can download a full Markdown export of all published posts and articles (including drafts), with human-readable dates, titles, and permalink URLs. It downloads as a single .md file named after your blog title.

No. There are no ad networks, no analytics scripts, and no third-party data harvesting. Your readers' attention and data stay with your content.

Yes. Your password is hashed with bcrypt (12 rounds, salted) and never stored in plain text. Sessions use HMAC-signed, httpOnly, sameSite-strict cookies that expire after 7 days. If you forget the password, delete the owner hash file and restart to reset.

Scrawl is a Progressive Web App (PWA). From the browser you can "install" it on any phone, tablet, or desktop. It behaves like a native app — full-screen, with an app icon — and works offline for static content, loading instantly.

A service worker caches static assets for fast, offline-capable loads. Navigation requests use network-first so content is always fresh when you're online, with cached fallback when you're not.

Yes. The interface is fully responsive and mobile-friendly. Posts are quick text entry; articles use the touch-friendly rich text toolbar. Input fields stay at 16px to prevent iOS zoom on focus.

Yes. On the Pro plan you can connect a custom domain so your content lives at your own address.

Yes. There's a built-in contact page where visitors can send you a message (name, optional email/subject, message). You see all messages in one place with the ability to delete, and the menu shows a pending-messages count. Spam protection (honeypot, time token, rate limiting) keeps it clean.

Yes. Both the contact form and comments use a three-layer anti-spam system: an invisible honeypot field that catches bots, a time-based token that rejects submissions sent too fast, and per-IP rate limiting. Owner actions are never throttled.

Yes. A dice icon in the header opens a random post — great for helping visitors discover your older writing. It appears on posts-related pages and plays a playful rolling animation while loading.

Your data lives on your own instance. You can delete individual posts and articles through the UI, and remove the entire database (the data directory) to start completely fresh. The Markdown export lets you keep a copy first.

Every post is marked with a small pixel-art thought bubble to the left of the date — a nod to the short bursts of thinking that make up the feed. It's monochrome (black in light theme, white in dark theme) and the post text wraps around it. Commenters have a matching pixel-art figure.

Yes. Scrawl runs on a simple Node.js + SQLite stack and can be self-hosted on any server. It ships as a single server file with no external dependencies to configure by hand — just install, start, and set your password on first visit.