Making Tiny Little Office links

Tiny Little Office (tinylittleoffice.com) keeps a whole document in its URL fragment, after the #, which browsers never send to a server. You write the document as TLO text (Markdown plus a few additions), percent-encode it into a link and hand the link over. Whoever opens it gets an editor on their own copy, and the address bar updates after each edit to hold the new version.

Procedure

1. Pick the app from the table below. Read only that app's reference file. It holds the shapes the app reads and one or two worked examples.
2. Write the TLO to a file in your scratchpad. Copy an example from the reference and change it rather than starting from nothing.
3. Build the link with the script, which packs the text the way the site does and runs the offline lint:

   python3 scripts/tlo.py link deck talk.tlo --title "My talk" --by "Muninn"
   

   It prints the URL on stdout, and findings and length warnings on stderr.
4. Fix every finding and rebuild. python3 scripts/tlo.py read <url> gives back the text any link holds, packed or plain, so you can edit a link you were sent.
5. Deliver. If the link is under 2,000 characters, give it as a Markdown link with a plain description. If it is longer, put the bare URL alone in a fenced code block. Chat renderers and some apps break or truncate long links, and the code block keeps it whole for copying. Say that the link is the document: an edit produces a new link, and anyone holding the link can read it.

The script makes the packed form the site itself shares: #/v1/<app>/<flag><payload>, the TLO deflated against TLO's frozen word dictionary, base64url with ~ for 62 and a + every 300 characters so messaging apps don't break it. It runs 35–50% shorter than the readable form. --title and --by go into the document's head. --plain gives the readable /<app>/#title=…&doc=… form instead, which the site also opens and packs on arrival.

Apps

App	Reference	For
write	references/write.md	Letters, memos, résumés, invoices, contracts, a table that adds up
outline	references/outline.md	Nested ideas; the same tree can open as slides, a mind map or an org chart
deck	references/deck.md	Slides, plus format: poster / zine / booklet / brochure / comic / badges
sheet	references/sheet.md	Tables with formulas, bar/line/pie/sankey charts, named-cell models
calc	references/calc.md	Sums with names, unit conversion, y = f(x) graphs
draw	references/draw.md	Boxes and arrows on an 8px grid; pixel art
diagram	references/diagram.md	kind: mind, org, family, lanes, timeline, venn, seating, net
anim	references/anim.md	A drawing with keyframes
cal	references/cal.md	Events, repeats, time zones; view: gantt for schedules
trip	references/trip.md	Stops with lat/lon and notes on a map

Load these only when needed. references/api.md covers file downloads (view=pdf|pptx|xlsx|…), encrypted short links, the JS API and npm CLI, password-sealed links and the official lint's full finding list. references/editors.md lists keyboard shortcuts for driving the editors in a browser.

Routing: numbers go in sheet, quick arithmetic in calc, prose in write, a tree of notes in outline, anything presented in deck. A diagram lays itself out, so prefer diagram over draw whenever one of its kinds fits. Tasks over weeks go in cal with view: gantt.

The URL

https://tinylittleoffice.com/<app>/#title=<title>&doc=<TLO, percent-encoded>

• Parameters go after #, never after ?.
• Optional parameters: by= (who made it, an unverified claim), view= (pdf, png, html, md, tlo, the app's own formats such as pptx, xlsx or ics; embed for an iframe; show to open a deck presenting).
• A head line app: sheet lets https://tinylittleoffice.com/#doc=… work without the app in the path.
• Length: QR codes hold 2,953 characters. Encrypted short links hold up to 12,272 (see api.md). Past 2,000, some chat apps cut the link.

TLO in one table

Write ordinary Markdown: headings, paragraphs, - and 1. lists nested by two spaces, - [ ] tasks, > quotes, pipe tables, **bold**, *italic*, `code`, [words](url), and footnotes as ^[note]. TLO adds the following:

Write	Means
--- / key: value / --- at the top	The head: title, by, theme, chart, kind, zone, format…
{#id .class key=value} at line end	Attributes: {.title}, {.two}, {due=2027-03-01}, {color=green every=week}
Price:money in a table header	Typed column: text number money percent date time check url rich long icon name option
~ A -> B: label	A connection (->, <-, <->, --)
```sheet … ```	Another app's document embedded here (any of the ten ids)
==hi==, ++under++, :rocket:	Highlight, underline, Lucide icon by name

A --- between blocks starts the next slide, page or card. Any table is a live spreadsheet. Nothing is fetched from the web: ![img](url) renders as a plain link.

Rules agents break

1. Whitespace is content. Nesting is two spaces per level, and a dropped space flattens the tree. Never hard-wrap a paragraph, because each line break is kept.
2. One thing per slide. A slide with a fence (chart, diagram, table) shows only that fence under its headline, and bullets on the same slide are dropped. Put the commentary in > notes or on its own slide. A {.title} slide takes a line or two, not a list.
3. Commas split lists. In Venn and seating lists, "2,000 cases" becomes two things. Write 2000.
4. Diagram things are short names. Two to four words each. Connection ends must match a listed name exactly (the text before |).
5. Embed, don't link. Put another document inside as a fence rather than linking to a second TLO URL.
6. A link is a copy. There is no shared live document. For a sign-up sheet or a form, tell people to send their edited link back. A short link is frozen once made.

Verifying

scripts/tlo.py lint is an offline subset of the official checks: fence-bullets, title-long, title-list, body-over, edge-end, edge-unused, net-colon, comma-number, label-long, doc-link and length. It is fast and needs no network. It does not measure rendered text or evaluate formulas. When Node is available and running third-party npm code is acceptable, npx tinylittleoffice lint <link> and measure run the real layout code and also catch formula-error, label-over and exact overflow (see api.md).

If a finding persists, the fix is in the TLO, not the URL. Re-read the app's reference rule for that shape.