Ask the Editor | Paperboy.run

General Enquiries

“What exactly is Paperboy? My nephew keeps mentioning it at dinner and I just nod along.”

— Bewildered in Brooklyn, NY

Dear Bewildered: Paperboy is four free tools for working with Markdown — a plain-text way of formatting writing that uses simple symbols instead of toolbar buttons. There is a desktop editor for drafting, a Chrome side panel for grabbing articles off the web, a command-line edition for the terminal, and an embeddable widget for site owners. Think of it as a portable newsroom for people who prefer their text clean and their corners sharp.

“Is Paperboy free? I've been burned before by 'free' tools that suddenly want my credit card.”

— Cautious in Calgary, AB

Dear Cautious: Free as the morning air. Paperboy is open source — anyone can inspect the code, use it, or improve it. There is no premium tier, no 'Pro' upgrade lurking behind a paywall, and certainly no credit card form. The Editor does not traffic in surprise invoices.

“Does Paperboy collect my data? I don't want my writing ending up in some AI training set.”

— Paranoid in Portland, OR

Dear Paranoid: Your writing stays on your machine. The desktop app saves locally. The extension runs in your browser. The widget runs on whatever site embeds it. Nothing leaves for a server, nothing drifts into the cloud, and nothing gets whispered to any large language model. Your words remain your own.

“Why does the website look like a newspaper from 1923? Is this a design choice or did something break?”

— Nostalgic in Nashville, TN

Dear Nostalgic: Very much intentional. The modern web has grown plump and compliant — rounded corners, gratuitous gradients, and pop-ups begging for your email at every turn. This design is a deliberate rebellion: sharp borders, honest typography, not a single drop shadow in sight. If it feels like something broke, that is precisely the intended effect.

“I want to try the desktop app right now. Where do I download it?”

— Impatient in Indianapolis, IN

Dear Impatient: The desktop editor is in final polish. Signed installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux will ship from GitHub Releases. Until the first release is published, build from source via the repository or use the file converter on the front page, which runs the same engine in your browser.

“Is there a command-line version? I live in my terminal and prefer not to open a browser if I can help it.”

— Terminally in Toronto, ON

Dear Terminally: Yes — the command-line edition installs from npm as @proticom/paperboy-cli. Two main commands carry the load: paperboy-cli convert turns any single file into markdown, and paperboy-cli crawl walks a whole site (via its sitemap) into one combined markdown document. Install globally with `npm install -g @proticom/paperboy-cli` (Node 20 or later). Everything runs offline, deterministically, with --json output for scripting.

Technical Matters

“What on earth is Markdown? People keep saying I should use it but nobody explains what it is.”

— Muddled in Manchester, UK

Dear Muddled: Markdown is a way of formatting text with simple symbols instead of toolbar buttons. A hash mark (#) makes a heading. Asterisks (*) make text bold or italic. A dash (-) makes a bullet point. Even the raw, unformatted text reads clearly — that is the whole idea. Think of it as typesetter's shorthand that any machine can render into a finished page. Learn five or six symbols and you will wonder why you ever wrestled with a word processor.

“How does the Chrome extension work? I'm worried it will slow down my browser.”

— Skeptical in Seattle, WA

Dear Skeptical: The extension sits quietly in your browser's side panel until summoned. Open it on any page and it reads the content, strips the ads and clutter, and converts the article into clean markdown. Two trusted libraries do the heavy lifting — Readability (from Mozilla, the Firefox people) and Turndown. It does not run in the background, injects nothing into pages, and has no noticeable effect on browser speed.

“Can Paperboy read text out of an image? I have screenshots full of useful prose.”

— Optical in Oakland, CA

Dear Optical: It can. Both the desktop editor and the Chrome extension include local OCR — short for optical character recognition, which simply means reading text out of pictures. Paperboy uses tesseract.js, a respected open-source engine that runs entirely in your browser. The first run downloads about 16 MB of language data; after that, every screenshot, scanned page, or chart becomes legible markdown without leaving your machine.

“What is this 'widget' thing? I have a blog and I'm curious if it would work for me.”

— Puzzled in Pittsburgh, PA

Dear Puzzled: The widget is a single script tag you paste into your site's HTML. Once in place, it gives visitors a button to toggle between the normal page and a clean markdown version of the content. Ideal for blogs, documentation, and anywhere a reader might want to copy or reformat your writing. If you can paste one line of HTML, you can run the widget.

“I pressed the 'Late Edition' toggle and everything went dark. Help!”

— Baffled in Baltimore, MD

Dear Baffled: Nothing is broken, dear reader. Late Edition is simply the dark theme — a nod to the evening papers that once rolled off the presses after sundown. Toggle it again in the masthead and warm, papery daylight returns. Both editions are purely cosmetic and leave your content untouched.

“I want to help build Paperboy. I'm learning to code — is there a way to contribute?”

— Curious in Chicago, IL

Dear Curious: Contributors of all experience levels are welcome at the press. The entire project lives on GitHub — report bugs, suggest features, improve the documentation, or submit code. Even fixing a typo earns the gratitude of the editorial desk. Start by reading the README, and do not hesitate to open an issue simply to introduce yourself. The newsroom always has room for one more.