For students. Built one at a time.
Everything due. Nothing else.
Every assignment from Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, and your calendar — on one small screen on your desk. It does nothing else.
Batch one · 50 numbered units · coming in 2028
Built, tested, and numbered by hand.
01The 30-second glance
It's one moment, repeated daily. The rest of the device exists to serve it.
You walk past your desk on the way out.
Lab Report 3, due in four hours.
You stay in. You write it.
From your browser to your desk.
Your school's class portal
Canvas Blackboard D2L · Brightspace Moodle Any calendarplus Paste any calendar share link (Apple, Google, Outlook, Proton, Notion) and the device reads it directly. It never touches Todoist.
The details, if you want them.
If you already use Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, or Moodle, you're almost done. A small browser plugin on your laptop watches your school's class portal for new assignments and writes them straight into your Margin task list, organized by course automatically. Your device reads that list on every refresh. Your assignments are never stored or read on a Margin server. We run a small service that keeps your device current; it holds a small amount of account and device data — your account email and Google sign-in ID, your plan, your device's settings, and a sealed key to your Todoist among them — so your device can reach it. Your task titles never touch it.
Requires a free Todoist account. Why we picked Todoist →
The same calm. Two places.
Margin is one thing — your whole semester, in order, nothing else. There are two places to keep it. Start in the browser; the desk is where it's calmest.
In your browser
Margin Pass
A browser plugin reads your classes and lays the whole semester out on the screen you already carry. The first week is free; the Pass opens the whole term.
On your desk
The device
The same list, off the laptop entirely — a small e-paper screen that sits on your desk and doesn't glow. The software comes with it, with nothing to renew. The calmest place to put it.
Same Margin, either way.
One list, sorted by course. Sorted before you look.
When the plugin spots a new course on your class portal, it files that course into your one Margin list as its own section, automatically. From then on, every assignment from CS 225 lands under CS 225. Every problem set from PHYS 211 lands under PHYS 211. The colors and labels you set follow them to the device.
Open the same list on your phone, check things off there, and the device updates on the next refresh. Open it on the device, mark Lab Report 3 done, and the list updates. Edit anywhere. The other place catches up.
You don't sort anything by hand. Margin keeps one list and opens a section per course as your courses appear, so there's no setup ceremony to get through. If you'd rather run your own layout, an advanced option lets you bring your own projects instead.
No feed. No scrolling. Just what's due.
An app on your phone is one swipe from everything else on your phone. You open it to see what's due. Twenty minutes later you're watching a video about lighthouse keepers. That's not a discipline problem so much as a design one.
It isn't a phone. There's nothing behind the screen — no notifications, nowhere a glance turns into an hour.
The trend is one place to put everything — every list, every app, every feed, finally consolidated. I built the other direction. One screen that holds what's due and turns the rest away.
A small dashboard. No algorithm. No AI. No feed. You walk past it. You see one red line, three task names, a date. You go back to whatever you were doing. Between refreshes it's just ink on paper. Nothing moves, nothing asks. There's nothing else here.
That separation is the entire product.
If that sounds like your desk, the waitlist takes one line →
Same week, different tones.
Five themes ship with the device. Cycle through them with one button.
See it in action.
Set your week on it.
Type a couple of real assignments. Watch them land on the screen the way they would on your desk.
Want it on your desk for real? Join the waitlist →
07Who's making this
I'm a physics major at Illinois. I grew tired of opening five tabs every morning to figure out what was due. Margin is what I built instead.
— Mitch Ring, founder
I build it in the open — the good prints and the bad. It's all in the build log.
Buying one for a student? Read this.
Students rarely buy something like this for themselves. They'll white-knuckle the semester on a phone calendar and swear next term will be different. More often than not, it's a parent, a grandparent, or an older sibling who sets a Margin on the desk. We built for that, too.
It isn't another app. There's software with a per-semester pass (Margin Pass, $9.99 a semester, and it doesn't auto-renew), but the device is the rung where the paying stops: buy one and the software comes with it — nothing to renew. It's a small dashboard that sits on a desk, quietly tells them what's due, and stays out of the way. No screen time added. No login they'll forget. No notification they'll learn to ignore. See how pricing works →
Your tuition has a comma in it. This doesn't.
Fifty pieces. The list goes first.
Hand-assembled, numbered, coming in 2028. The waitlist gets first pick of the fifty and the launch price locked in — the earlier you join, the earlier your turn. Leave your email; you'll hear from me when there's something to act on.
Is Margin right for you yet?
- Browser: Chrome or a Chromium browser (Edge, Brave, Arc) to run the setup plugin. Safari and Firefox come later.
- Tasks: a free Todoist account. Calendars work through any calendar link, whatever app you keep them in.
- Your school: Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, or Moodle, and confirmed for your campus. Tested at UIUC; NIU is in beta.
- Shipping: US & Canada first.
Not all four yet? Join the waitlist anyway. Batch two widens the list, and we'll write when Margin fits. See the full school list →
Outside North America? Sign up anyway. We want to know how many to ship in batch two.
Expected $189. Final number set at our Kickstarter launch.
The parts run about $80. The rest is us mending it when your school changes Canvas, so it still works in April, not just the weekend you set it up. Why not just build one? →
By joining, you agree I can email you about Margin when there's something to act on — the Pass opening, and device pre-orders opening. No newsletter, no marketing, no data brokers. Privacy policy →
Build log · July 2026 Margin stands on its own now. The browser version does real work on its own: a free tier, plus a Pass for the whole term. It's live on the Chrome Web Store.The road to batch one
- The whole path works: assignments flow from the class portal into Todoist and onto the device
- All five themes showing on the real e-paper panel
- One-tap setup: sign in once and the device pairs to your account on its own
- A 3D-printed bezel and housing to live with
- Final enclosure & locked dimensions
- Pre-orders open via Kickstarter when the build's ready
- Batch one assembled & shipped, 2028