Exploring how constraints shape thinking
Inklings is an iPad-only sketching app built to explore how intentional constraints can improve focus, thinking, and commitment.
Most digital sketching tools add freedom: infinite zoom and rotation gestures, an endless canvas. Paper does the opposite. It limits you, and those limits are often what make it useful.
This project is an experiment in trying to bring the best of both together.
I wanted a notebook that feels more like paper than software usually feels.
For me, this meant:
Instead of one endless surface, Inklings uses a 2D grid of pages that you navigate by swiping. You move left, right, up, and down to create or move to adjacent pages, like spreading sheets of paper out on a huge desk.
The goal wasn’t to mimic paper visually, but to recreate its cognitive effects: focus, spatial memory, and commitment.
Inklings is implemented using a hybrid of SwiftUI and UIKit, with PencilKit for drawing.
Core features include:
The hardest part wasn’t drawing, it was gesture design.
Map view, page navigation, zoom prevention, and Pencil input all compete for the same touches. To keep the interaction simple, I had to actively remove features and narrow the scope until the tool behaved in a way that felt obvious rather than clever.
This was a constant trade-off between flexibility and clarity.
Exactly the same tension that shows up in professional product design — just in a smaller, more personal form.
Most of the implementation was written using Claude Code as a pair-programming partner.
This kept the codebase understandable and gave me a way to explore ideas quickly without losing control of the design.
I’ve been using Inklings daily for some months for work notes, sketching, journalling, and it works exactly the way I hoped it would.
Before releasing it more widely, I need to solve some problems that don’t affect me but would affect others:
Tim Lloyd