_{Built in collaboration with Claude}

Refy

A PureRef-style reference board that lives in your browser.

Collect images, arrange them freely, then lock the screen and trace right on your tablet.

Open Refy →

No account. No server. No dependencies. One HTML file.

Best in Chrome — see Which browser.

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What it does

• Boards, plural — a built-in library lets you create, rename and switch between boards. Everything is saved automatically in your browser (IndexedDB), nothing ever leaves your device.
• Arrange freely — move, resize, rotate and mirror images with touch gestures or the mouse. Rotation snaps to 0/90/180/270°.
• Draw & write — a freehand pencil (color, weight, undo) for arrows and annotations, plus proper text blocks: typed, resizable, rotatable, serif or sans.
• Import almost anything — photos, PDFs (pages become images), plain-text notes, drag & drop, or paste. Pasted text becomes a text block.
• Trace mode — per-image black & white, contrast, opacity and edge extraction to turn any photo into clean outlines; then the padlock freezes the whole screen and keeps the display awake. Hold it one second to unlock.
• Song plans — drop a .json arrangement on the board (or just paste it) and it becomes a card: title, tempo, section strip, energy curve. Double-tap it for the full screen — timeline, list view, and a playhead that runs at the tempo and tells you which section you are in and when the next one lands.
• A quiet calendar — a local agenda in the ··· menu. Dates and events live in Refy only; there is no sync and no account.
• Backups on your device — export any board as a portable .refy.json file and re-import it anywhere (imports become a new board, nothing gets overwritten).
• Installs like an app — add it to your home screen and it runs full screen, offline, and updates itself: it checks for a new version on every launch and reloads once when one lands.
• Made for iPad — install it from Safari as a full-screen app, works offline, imports straight from your photo library. Large photos are downscaled on import to keep the tab fast.
• Minimal by design — the toolbar stays small; tools and options only appear when they are relevant, with discreet animations throughout. Cream paper surfaces, hand-drawn monochrome icons, Klein blue accent, curated board backgrounds.

Which browser

Refy stores everything on your device, so what matters is whether the browser lets it keep that data. They do not behave the same.

Chrome — recommended. It grants persistent storage to installed apps and to bookmarked sites, which means the browser will not wipe your boards on its own. Installed from Chrome, Refy also updates itself reliably.

Other Chromium browsers work, but some refuse persistent storage or clear site data when you close the last window. If that happens, Refy warns you at startup and offers a Protect from erasure button in ··· → Dropbox. Two things help: bookmark the site, and allow notifications — Chromium treats both as a signal that the site matters. Refy never sends notifications; the permission is only the key to that lock.

Safari on iPad works and installs cleanly, with one caveat: a home screen app and Safari itself do not always share the same storage, so boards created in one may not appear in the other.

Whatever the browser, the durable copy is the one that lives elsewhere: connect Dropbox, or export a board to a file.

Controls

Action	Touch	Mouse / keyboard
Add images	+ button (photo library)	+, drag & drop, or paste Ctrl/Cmd V
Import PDF / notes	··· menu → Import a document	same, or drag & drop
Pencil	pencil button, two fingers to navigate while drawing	D, Ctrl/Cmd Z to undo a stroke
Text block	T button, double-tap to edit	T, double-click to edit
Move an element	one-finger drag	drag
Resize / rotate	two-finger pinch on the element	corner handles / top handle, R to rotate, M to mirror
Image adjustments	sliders button when an image is selected	black & white, contrast, opacity, edge extraction
Pan / zoom the board	one-finger drag / pinch on the background	drag / scroll wheel
Boards library	boards button	B
Calendar	··· menu	C
Fit everything	frame button	F
Trace mode	padlock (hold ~1 s to unlock)	padlock
Delete selection	trash button	Delete

Song plan format

A plan is written in bars, never in seconds: timecodes are derived from the tempo, so changing the BPM updates the whole grid. Colours are not part of the format — the screen is black and white, and each section takes its shade from its own energy.

{
  "title": "Quantum In Se",
  "bpm": 100,
  "meter": [4, 4],
  "bars": 208,
  "phrase": 16,
  "notes": "free text",
  "sections": [{ "bar": 1, "name": "Intro" }],
  "lanes": [{ "name": "Kick", "clips": [{ "from": 49, "to": 144, "fade": "grow", "label": "double-time", "accent": false }] }],
  "markers": [{ "bar": 161, "label": "2nd chord" }],
  "zones": [{ "from": 49, "to": 200, "label": "mixable range" }],
  "energy": [{ "bar": 1, "v": 0.05 }, { "bar": 129, "v": 0.9 }],
  "history": [{ "title": "Previous version", "bars": 200, "sections": [{ "from": 1, "to": 24, "name": "pad + field recording" }] }]
}

from and to are inclusive bars. A section runs until the next one starts. fade is in, out, both or grow. v runs from 0 to 1 — one point per inflection, not per bar. Only title, bpm and bars are required.

Install on iPad

1. Open the app in Safari
2. Tap Share → Add to Home Screen
3. Launch it from the icon — full screen, offline-ready

Under the hood

Vanilla JavaScript in a single index.html — no framework, no build step, no tracking. Pointer Events drive a small gesture state machine (drag / pinch / rotate / pan / zoom), boards persist in IndexedDB with an in-browser library, and a tiny service worker makes the whole thing work offline as a PWA.

Serve the folder with any static server to hack on it:

python3 -m http.server 8000