Cowpin journal
Notes from building things — from automated YouTube Shorts pipelines to bookmarks that outlast their host.
A lot of people save links into a Notion database because it's already open all day. Here's why that setup works fine at 20 links and falls apart at 200 — and what a dedicated tool does differently.
Cowpin
8/26/2026
An honest comparison between Wallabag and Cowpin for people who tried (or are considering) self-hosting their read-it-later library — plus the exact field-by-field migration table for moving in either direction.
Cowpin
8/19/2026
An honest head-to-head between linkding and Cowpin — what self-hosting actually buys you, what it costs, and exactly which fields survive a migration in either direction.
Cowpin
8/12/2026
Instapaper is still running — this isn't a shutdown post. But if you're moving on, here's exactly how to export your library and bring it into Cowpin with your folders, highlights and unread queue intact.
Cowpin
8/6/2026
Four of the most beloved places to save things on the internet are gone. Here's exactly how each one died, the pattern they share, and a practical routine so the next shutdown costs you nothing.
Cowpin
8/5/2026
An honest build log. AI turned features that used to take weeks into an afternoon each — a reader, highlights, a Pinboard-compatible API, extensions, a CLI. It also made painfully clear that building was never the real bottleneck.
Cowpin
7/27/2026
Mozilla shut Pocket down for good in 2025. Here's what to do whether you saved your export in time or not — where the real alternatives are (Instapaper, Raindrop, Readwise Reader, Wallabag, Karakeep, Linkwarden and Cowpin), how to read the zip of CSVs Mozilla actually mails you, and how to make sure no service can hold your reading list hostage again.
Cowpin
7/27/2026
ElevenLabs acquired Omnivore and shut it down in November 2024, deleting user data after a two-week window. Here's what to look for in a replacement if you loved Omnivore's highlights, export, and open API — and how Cowpin fits.
Cowpin
7/27/2026
A bookmark is a promise that a page will be there later — and the web breaks that promise constantly. Here's why links rot, how bad it really is, and the practical ways to make sure the things you save actually last.
Cowpin
7/20/2026
Most saved links die in a graveyard you never reopen. Here's how a modern bookmark manager — full-text archive, semantic search, ask-your-library AI, and resurfacing — turns that pile into something you can actually use. An honest tour of what these features do and where they fall short.
Cowpin
7/19/2026
The browser bookmark bar works fine until it doesn't — no tags, no search that actually works, nothing shared across devices you don't sync, no way back once a saved page goes dark. Here's where it breaks and what a dedicated bookmark manager actually buys you.
Cowpin
7/19/2026
Pocket, del.icio.us, Google Reader, Google Bookmarks — the graveyard of "we're sunsetting this product" emails is long. A five-minute checklist for making sure your bookmark library survives the next one, whichever service it lands on.
Cowpin
7/19/2026
Read-later lists are where links go to die — one study puts the reopen rate under 10%. Here's why saving isn't the problem, a few honest habits that help, and how Cowpin's Rediscover feature fights the graveyard automatically instead of asking for more willpower.
Cowpin
7/19/2026
An honest look at self-hosted bookmark managers (Linkding, Shaarli, Wallabag) — what you gain, what you're signing up to maintain, and when a hosted, privacy-respecting option like Cowpin gets you 90% of the benefit with none of the upkeep.
Cowpin
7/19/2026
Most bookmark apps treat the API as an afterthought. If you want to script your saves, build your own tools, or just guarantee you can always get your data out, here's what a real API needs — and how Cowpin's Pinboard-compatible API stacks up.
Cowpin
7/18/2026
A step-by-step guide to migrating your Pinboard library to Cowpin — one-click API import or an HTML export, tags and privacy intact, nothing lost. Plus what's the same, what's better, and what we're still catching up on.
Cowpin
7/18/2026
A fair, no-hype look at where to move your bookmarks in 2026 — Karakeep, Linkwarden, Raindrop, Linkding, LinkAce, Instapaper, Wallabag, Shiori, Readeck, raw browser bookmarks, and Cowpin — with licenses, real prices, comparison tables, and straight talk about who each one is actually for.
Cowpin
7/18/2026
An honest look at when to leave Raindrop.io and where to go — a text-first, tag-based bookmark manager with a real API, full-text search, and export-anytime portability. Includes who should stay on Raindrop, and how to move your library in a few minutes.
Cowpin
7/18/2026
Pinboard.in is the bookmark manager I never stopped missing. Here's how Cowpin became one — schema, tRPC API, public profiles, RSS, bookmarklet, the lot — built on top of a Nuxt 3 + Prisma + tRPC monorepo.
Cowpin
3/8/2026
The old rule was solo founder = one product, ship it, iterate. Here's how frontier models and a good IDE changed the math for building Cowpin — and what AI still doesn't fix.
Cowpin
3/8/2026