Quill.
Publishing tool, front to back — A writing and publishing tool that gets out of the writer’s way — a clean canvas backed by a serious engine.
Overview
Quill wanted the calm of a blank page with the power of a real publishing platform underneath. We designed and built both halves.
The challenge
Editors are unforgiving — a single janky keystroke and writers leave. The interface had to disappear while the engine did heavy lifting.
- A rock-solid, distraction-free editor
- Real-time save and version history
- Publishing that just works, everywhere
- Performance that never stutters mid-sentence
Our approach
We obsessed over the editor first — latency, selection, undo — then built the platform it deserved.
- A custom editor tuned for zero-lag input
- Versioning and autosave you never think about
- A typed API and clean publishing pipeline
- Motion and chrome kept nearly invisible
The outcome
Quill feels like writing on paper and publishes like a machine. Writers stay because nothing gets in the way; editors stay because nothing breaks.
“It disappears — which is the highest praise for a writing tool.”
Under the hood
Remix on Node renders MDX documents from PostgreSQL, Meilisearch powers instant search, media flows straight to S3 with presigned uploads, and everything ships as one Docker image.
- MDX pipeline with custom shortcodes, sanitised
- Meilisearch: typo-tolerant search in ~20ms
- Presigned S3 uploads — media never touches the app
- Single-container deploys, zero-downtime swaps
Also considered Next.js + Contentlayer was close; Remix's nested routes matched the editor/preview split better.