ST
Sugarhouse Tech

iPhone · iPad · Mac · Private beta

A quiet place for the books you already own.

It doesn't sell you books. There's no store, no feed, no recommendations, no reading streak. You bring the EPUBs and PDFs you already have, and it gives them a reader worth using — one that opens without an account and works with the router unplugged.

No account to readWorks offlineOn-device AIYour files, your server

This name is going to change.

We built this as Inkling. Then a large AI company shipped a model with the same name, which is a bad neighbour for a quiet reading app. So a new name is coming before launch — same app, same team, different sign on the door. Everything you see here is real; only the wordmark is temporary.

What it looks like

Built to disappear behind the page.

The reading view showing a chapter titled Your quiet reading place, with contents, search, notes, and typography controls in a slim top bar
The reader, opened straight from a file with no server and no sign-in. Chrome stays out of the way until you reach for it.
The reader settings panel open over a page, showing typeface, text size, line spacing, and reading flow controls
Typography is a first-class setting, not a slider buried in a menu — including OpenDyslexic and Atkinson Hyperlegible.

The three that matter

Features we haven't seen anywhere else.

01

A companion that can't spoil the book

Ask who a character is or what happened in book two, and you get an answer built only from the pages you have actually read. What's ahead of your bookmark isn't summarised, hinted at, or hedged — it shows up as a sealed count and nothing more. It runs on Apple's on-device models, so the question and the book never leave your phone.

Apple devices with Apple Intelligence

02

Margin notes in your own handwriting

Write in the margins with Apple Pencil the way you would in a paperback — pen, marker, a real eraser, pressure and all. Each stroke is anchored to the sentence it sits beside, so it stays put when you change the font size. Open the same book in a browser and your ink is still there.

iPad with Apple Pencil

03

It refuses to guess about your books

Most libraries quietly mangle metadata and let you find out later. This one reads what's actually embedded in the file, and when it isn't confident it sets the book aside and asks you instead of guessing. Every import leaves a receipt you can read, so no book ever silently goes missing.

Every platform

The rest of it

The unglamorous things you'd miss immediately.

Reading rooms

Save a whole look — type, spacing, margins, warmth — as a named room. Bedside. Study desk. Migraine calm. Switch in one tap and get back exactly the page you like.

Night that's actually dark

Three red-shifted night themes that dim and warm the book covers too, so opening the library at 2am doesn't blind you.

Notes that stay yours

Highlights, notes, ink, and voice memos collect in one searchable notebook across every book — and export to plain Markdown or JSON whenever you want them elsewhere.

Spoken notes, transcribed privately

Talk instead of typing. Transcription runs on your device with no cloud fallback, so the audio never reaches a server — not even ours.

Read-aloud that follows along

Listen with the current sentence highlighted as it's spoken, with lock-screen controls and a sleep timer. Hand off between reading and listening without losing your place.

Bring your own shelf

EPUB, PDF, CBZ, and more. Run it entirely on your own machine if you like — it speaks OPDS, so other readers can borrow from your library too.

Privacy

What you read is nobody's business.

No account to read a book

Open a file and start reading. There's no sign-up wall, no email capture, and no server involved in local reading at all.

The AI runs on your device

The reading companion, the recaps, the voice transcription, and the handwriting recognition all run on Apple's on-device models. Your books and your questions stay with you.

Sync we can't read

When sync arrives it rides your own iCloud private database. Your notes are encrypted to your Apple account, and we have no way to see them.

No ads. No trackers. No data sale.

There is no analytics pipeline and nothing to sell. The business model is you paying us for an app, which we think is the honest one.

Where it actually is

Honest status, since you'll ask.

Shipping today

The reader, the library, notes and highlights, the notebook, read-aloud, and the import pipeline. It runs a real 4,000-book library every day.

In private beta

The iPhone, iPad, and Mac apps. Small internal group only — no App Store listing yet, and no public TestFlight.

Not built yet

Moving book files between your devices (notes and progress sync first), premium voices, and an Android app. We'd rather say so than imply otherwise.

Private beta

Want in early?

We're taking a small group of readers first — people who'll actually tell us when something is wrong. If that's you, email us and say a little about what and how you read. Requires iOS 18 or macOS 15; the on-device AI features need Apple Intelligence.

Ask for an invite

FAQ

Common questions

So what will it be called?

We don't know yet, and we'd rather not announce a name we haven't cleared. It'll be settled before the app is public. The app itself doesn't change — only the wordmark.

Where do the books come from?

You. It's a reader for files you already own — EPUBs, PDFs, and a long tail of other formats. There's no store, and we don't sell or supply books.

Does it work without internet?

Yes. Local reading needs no server and no account. Downloads resume if they're interrupted, and notes you make offline are queued and saved when you reconnect.

Will my highlights sync between my iPhone and iPad?

That's the plan, through your own iCloud, and it covers notes, highlights, and reading position. Moving the book files themselves comes in a later update — for now a book shows on your other device as a greyed-out row.

Is the AI going to spoil my book?

It's built so it can't. The companion only draws on text up to your furthest-read position; anything past that is sealed and shown as a count, not a summary. That constraint is the feature.

What will it cost?

The reader itself will stay free — unlimited books, notes, highlights, themes, and read-aloud with device voices. Sync and the AI companion will be a paid tier. We haven't settled the price, so we're not going to print a number we might change.