Build your first research trail.

Redline works beside the page while you read and in a full library when you want to review. Everything you save is kept in browser-managed local extension storage.

1. Open Redline

Use the Redline toolbar button or the browser’s extension menu. Chrome-family browsers open a side panel; Firefox opens a sidebar. If the browser does not provide either interface, Redline falls back to an extension tab.

Pinning Redline to the toolbar makes capture easier, but it is not required. Redline cannot interact with browser-internal pages such as extension settings, the new-tab page, or other protected URLs.

2. Start with your browser bookmarks

The fastest way to experience Redline with material you already care about is to bring in your existing bookmark collection. Redline turns supported links into Pages and their full bookmark-folder paths into dossiers, giving you an immediate library to search, organize, annotate, and connect as evidence.

1. Create a bookmark file. In Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Brave, or another compatible Chrome-family browser, open the bookmark manager and choose Export bookmarks to save an .html file. In Firefox, open Bookmarks → Manage bookmarks, then choose Import and Backup → Backup to save a .json file.
2. In Redline, select Library → Open Library, then choose Imports in the full Library.
3. Under Import browser bookmarks, select the bookmark file and review the local preview.
4. Check the counts for new Pages and dossiers, duplicate URLs, and unsupported URLs, then choose Import Bookmarks.

3. Save a source

1. Open a normal web page you want to keep.
2. Open Redline and select the Page tab.
3. Review Title, Read status, and Importance. Add a Page note, Tags, or Linked dossiers if they are already useful.
4. Choose Save changes. The badge changes from “unsaved” to “saved,” and the page becomes a searchable local record.

A saved Page is a structured record. When the exact source wording matters, use the sidebar’s Source Witness section: choose Preview capture, review the optional readable-evidence preview, then choose Preserve capture. Use Open capture history to review the stored version in the Library. This user-initiated text-first capture remains local and excludes scripts, login state, and third-party assets; see the capture guide.

4. Capture an exact passage

1. Select relevant text on a supported web page.
2. In the floating menu, choose HL (Highlight), C (Claim), S (Source), Q (Question), or FU (Follow Up). That choice saves immediately.
3. Open the sidebar’s Annotations tab. Under On this page, choose Open for the new item.
4. In the Library annotation record, add a Note, Tags, or Dossiers, then choose Save.

For a finding you want to write yourself, use Annotations → Type → Finding → Context or next step → Capture annotation in the sidebar. The full list of kinds is Highlight, Note, Claim, Source, Counterpoint, Definition, Quote, Follow Up, Todo, Question, and Warning.

The floating menu preserves selected text with nearby anchoring context. Right-click capture and manual findings remain useful, but they do not preserve the same positional selector data. The saved wording remains in the Library even if a later page change prevents visual restoration.

5. Connect the work

To create a dossier beside the page, select Dossier, fill in New dossier and optionally Description, then choose Create and link page. This route creates a pinned dossier and immediately saves the current page into it.

A page and its annotations have separate dossier and tag fields. Linking the page does not automatically link every annotation. Open an annotation in the Library, select its Dossiers, and choose Save when that finding belongs in the dossier too.

Tags are lowercase, single-token labels. Type a tag and press Enter, Tab, comma, or space to commit it; whitespace splits pasted text into separate tags. Use a hyphen for a phrase such as primary-source.

6. Review and search

In the sidebar, select Library, then Open Library. The full Library opens in a browser tab with Dashboard, Pages, Annotations, Dossiers, Tags, Domains, Evidence, Search, Imports, Exports, Data Health, and Settings.

Use Library → Search for Global Search across saved pages, annotations, dossiers, tags, domains, and claims. The sidebar’s smaller Search tab displays page and annotation matches only. Neither search reads unsaved live web content.

7. Make your first backup

1. In the full Library’s left navigation, select Exports.
2. Under Export Builder, choose Scope → All data.
3. Choose Format → JSON backup, then Export.
4. Store the downloaded file somewhere you already back up.

Extension shortcuts

Browsers and other extensions can claim the same keys. If a shortcut does not work, use the toolbar or context-menu action and review your browser’s extension-shortcut settings.