The word hikae (控え) is a Japanese term for a note kept for later: a reserve, a record, something set aside with the intention of returning to it. It turned out to be a more accurate name than most.
The Problem
I read a lot of RSS on my phone and personal Mac, but a lot of what I save is work-relevant. Because I can’t sync iCloud to my work machine, my usual workflow (save on phone, read on Mac) falls apart. I didn’t want to jump into another ecosystem like Raindrop or Readwise; I already have my own folders and tags in my head, and I didn’t want to rebuild that logic in someone else’s product.
The build case was easy: a private GitHub repo costs nothing, gives me full history for free, and I already use it for everything else.
What Hikae Does
Hikae is a bookmark manager with a capture-first mindset. Anything you save hits an inbox, and you organize it when you actually have context. The data lives in a single JSON file in a private repository, which means every surface reads and writes the same schema via the GitHub API. The format is human-readable, there’s no vendor lock-in, and I can query it from the terminal if I ever need to.
The Surfaces
- iOS Shortcut: The high-friction point. It pulls the title and source automatically from the Share Sheet and drops a pending file into
data/pending/. - macOS Menu Bar App: A SwiftUI app that polls for inbox items and gives me a badge reminder: you captured something, now do something with it.
- PWA: The management interface, deployed to GitHub Pages. It works on iOS, personal Mac, and work Mac equally, which is the whole point.
- Raycast Extension: For quick capture and search at work.
I opted for a pattern where each surface drops a small “pending” file rather than fighting over a single bookmarks.json file. It prevents race conditions during syncs and makes the whole system feel incredibly lightweight.