Capture Anywhere¶

The single most common capture friction: you see something worth keeping, and the vault is too many taps away. This page gives you a one-gesture capture path on every device — without a cloud in the middle. Every path below lands a plain-markdown stub in your vault's inbox/; the weekly review promotes what earns it, same as any capture.

There are four paths, cheapest first. All of them assume your vault is synced across devices — set that up once with the vault sync guide.

1. The CLI (terminal, scripts, agents)¶

memex ingest url https://example.com/essay --vault ~/vault --apply

Fetches the page, extracts readable markdown locally, files it with provenance (source_url, captured_via, capture time), and skips URLs you already captured. Also available: ingest kindle, ingest readwise, ingest rss, ingest youtube-feed, ingest feeds, ingest youtube. See memex-cli/.

2. Desktop browser — the bookmarklet¶

Zero install: a bookmark whose URL is JavaScript. It opens Obsidian with a pre-filled inbox note carrying the page title, URL, and whatever text you had selected.

Create a new bookmark, name it → inbox, and paste this as the URL — replacing YOURVAULT with your Obsidian vault's name (URL-encode spaces as %20):

javascript:(()=>{const t=document.title,u=location.href,s=String(window.getSelection()).trim();location.href='obsidian://new?vault=YOURVAULT&file=inbox%2F'+encodeURIComponent(t.replace(/[\\/:*?"<>|#^[\]]/g,'-').slice(0,60).trim())+'&content='+encodeURIComponent('---\ntitle: "'+t.replace(/"/g,"'")+'"\nstatus: inbox\ncaptured_via: bookmarklet\nsource_url: '+u+'\n---\n\n'+(s?'> '+s.replace(/\n/g,'\n> ')+'\n\n':'')+u+'\n');})()

What it does, exactly: builds an obsidian://new URI — the note is created by your Obsidian, in your vault, on your disk. No extension, no permissions, no server. Works in every desktop browser.

Select a passage first and the capture arrives as a quote block.
Want the full article text too? Capture the stub now, run memex ingest url <url> --apply later — the stub and the full capture meet in your weekly review.

Build once in the Shortcuts app; afterwards "→ inbox" appears in every share sheet (Safari, YouTube, X, anywhere that shares a URL):

New Shortcut → tap the info panel → enable Show in Share Sheet; set input types to URLs, Safari web pages, Text.
Add Text action:

---
title: "Shortcut Input"
status: inbox
captured_via: shortcut
source_url: Shortcut Input
---

Shortcut Input

(Insert the magic variable Shortcut Input in the three places shown; for the title line use the variable's Name if offered.) 3. Add Save File action → toggle Ask Where to Save OFF → pick your synced vault's inbox/ folder (works with the Obsidian folder via iCloud/Working Copy — see the sync guide mobile section). 4. In Save File, set the file name to capture- + Current Date (custom format yyyyMMdd-HHmmss) so names never collide. 5. Name the Shortcut → inbox. Done — share anything to it.

4. Android¶

Easiest: Obsidian's own share target — share any URL/text to Obsidian, and set Obsidian's "Default location for new notes" to inbox/. The note carries the shared text; add the URL if the app didn't.

Power users can replicate the iOS recipe with Tasker/Automate (receive share → write file into the synced vault's inbox/) — community-supported territory.

Why not a browser extension?¶

Deliberately deferred: the paths above cover the job with zero binaries to trust, zero store reviews, and zero maintenance surface. If real usage shows the bookmarklet is the bottleneck, an extension earns its roadmap slot — the criterion is written in the roadmap, not vibes.

The contract, restated¶

Whatever the path: the capture is a plain markdown file in inbox/, with provenance frontmatter, created by tools you control. Nothing is proxied, nothing leaves your devices, and the LLM is nowhere in the loop.