Your material, your structure
Most study apps treat you like a consumer of someone else's catalog. Shelf inverts that: after you sign in, /my-content becomes your home — a workspace for PDFs, typed notes, sketch pages, and imported documents you upload yourself.
Collections (sometimes called notebooks in the UI) are top-level folders. Inside a collection you can add topics — thematic groupings like "Constitutional Law" or "Organic Chemistry Unit 3" — and pages that hold the actual files.
Flexible page placement
Shelf supports three placement patterns without forcing a default "General" topic:
- Library-root pages live directly under /my-content — ideal for one-off readings.
- Collection-level pages sit inside a notebook but outside any topic — useful for syllabus overviews or mixed material.
- Topic pages are the classic Collection → Topic → Page hierarchy for deep organization.
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Explorer, search, and resume reading
The library sidebar supports search, sort, pagination, and pinning recently opened collections so they stay visible while you browse. Click a collection to expand it; Shelf remembers the last page you read in that collection and can resume there on any device once you are signed in.
Rename collections, topics, and page titles in place — URLs keep stable slugs, so bookmarks and planner links keep working after a rename.
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Who this is for
Competitive exam candidates juggling dozens of PDFs, law and medical students annotating case law or journals, and anyone who outgrew scattered Downloads folders. If your study material is mostly PDFs and notes you curate yourself, Shelf's library model maps cleanly to how you already think about revision.
Start with a collection that matches one exam or subject
When you first sign up, resist the urge to mirror your entire hard-drive tree. Create one collection per major subject — Polity, Economy, Essay — and add topics only when a folder would hold more than a dozen pages. Shelf never invents a default General topic, so empty topics never clutter your sidebar.
Root-level pages are perfect for material you reference across subjects: a one-page formula sheet, a news clipping, or a syllabus PDF you open daily. They appear beside collections on /my-content, so you never drill three levels deep for something you use every hour.
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Naming, renaming, and stable links
Titles are for humans; slugs are for URLs. Rename a collection from Polity 2025 to Polity Mains without breaking planner tasks or bookmarks — the slug stays the same under the hood.
If you share a link to a page with a study partner, they see only what your sharing settings allow. Private libraries stay private; curated curriculum on /learn is a separate, admin-published path.
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Pinning and resume reading
Pin collections you are actively revising so they stay at the top of the explorer while you browse the rest of the library. Shelf remembers the last page you opened inside each collection and offers to resume there on any signed-in device once sync completes.
Sort by recent activity when you return from a break — the pages you touched yesterday float up without manual starring.
Upload paths inside the hierarchy
Upload directly into a topic when you know where a PDF belongs. Upload at collection level when the file spans multiple themes. Upload at library root when you have not decided yet — move or re-title later without re-uploading.
Each page stores one source PDF in object storage. Parsed HTML powers highlights and Study AI; original PDF view stays available when layout matters more than text selection.
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Search across everything you own
Command-palette search (⌘K) indexes titles and, when processing finished, body text from your uploads. Hit Enter on a result to open the reader immediately — no intermediate list view.
Library-wide Study AI chat can answer across collections when you need synthesis: compare two topics, list everything you uploaded about federalism, or draft a revision checklist from your own notes.
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A workflow that scales through the year
Prelims phase: few collections, many root-level current-affairs PDFs. Mains phase: split collections by paper, add topics per syllabus section. Interview phase: pin essay drafts and mock transcripts at collection level.
Shelf grows with you because structure is optional until you need it — not a rigid course catalog you must fill on day one.