About Spleen
Read how Spleen came into being, who it is made for, and the ideas behind it.
What Spleen stands for
Spleen starts with a simple conviction: your words are yours. We do not sell your attention, follow you closely, or fill the page with distractions that take you out of your writing flow. A writing tool should protect your concentration and privacy, so that your attention stays on the paragraph in front of you and not on everything happening around it.
The app should feel like a space specially designed to help you concentrate. The tools are available when you need them, but fade into the background as soon as you are in the middle of a sentence and want to maintain that flow. The goal is simple: as few obstacles as possible between your thoughts and the page, whether you are writing a first draft, rewriting, or trying to capture a good idea before it vanishes.
How Spleen started
The idea for Spleen originated about two years ago, when I discovered Scrivener. I was impressed by the attention paid to supporting writers with large and complex projects. Just out of curiosity and because I wanted to learn something new, I started wondering if I could build something similar for the web.
It didn’t happen in a straight line. I experimented with different technical stacks, rebuilt the same basic ideas over and over again, and often ended up with something that wasn’t quite right. Somewhere in that process, Spleen slowly began to take shape. Instead of wanting to mimic Scrivener feature by feature, I wanted to create a calmer place to write: with sufficient structure and capabilities for serious work, but without every screen becoming cluttered.
More advanced tools do need to be there, but they only need to stand out when you really need them. The basics must remain simple: open your project, find where you left off, and write on. If your project grows or you want more control, you can enable extra features without the entire app turning into a cockpit.
Who Spleen is for
For writers who care more about the act of writing itself than everything surrounding it: novelists, essayists, note-takers, and anyone looking for a dedicated spot to reflect on the page.
Whether you write every day or just take a moment now and then, Spleen is designed to help you pick up where you left off easily. Your projects remain neatly organized, you can quickly find your way back to where you left off, and there is no need for an elaborate ritual between opening the app and resuming your work.
What Spleen offers you
In practice, this means having a quiet editor with powerful tools at your fingertips, plus a flexible structure that can grow from loose notes to full projects with sections, documents, and quick jumps between ideas. Spleen is made for both short daily writing sessions and long projects that develop over months.
It also means you can search quickly, capture ideas when they unexpectedly strike, and create polished exports whenever you want to share your work outside of Spleen. Spleen tries to support your writing without interfering with goals, statistics, or game elements. The focus remains on the work itself.
How we build
When developing new features, we listen closely to user feedback and prioritize changes that remove real obstacles in daily writing.
If something isn’t working, fixing it takes the highest priority. We release small updates regularly and keep the changelog honest so you can track exactly how the app is developing.
Built by one person
At the moment, Spleen is a solo project. I design, build, translate, and test everything myself, and I also provide support. Because the gap between feedback and execution is so small, I can immediately respond to how people actually use the app and improve it step by step. Development might be a bit slower than with a larger team, but this ensures decisions remain close to the reason I started Spleen in the first place.
In some parts of the app, you will encounter the word ‘we,’ because that aligns with the direction in which I hope Spleen will develop. For the time being, I conceive, evaluate, and build every improvement myself.
I am building Spleen with the long term in mind. New features are not only added, but also tested and refined. The goal remains a stable and reliable place for real writing.
Get in touch
If something isn’t running quite smoothly yet, let me know. You are in direct contact with the person behind the design and programming of Spleen, and I read every message.
Do you have ideas, complaints, or wishes regarding your way of working? Feel free to send them through. Early feedback has a direct impact here and often leads to the next update.