Ribbon.
Read it together.
A quiet, shared place to read the Bible with one person, or a few. See who else is reading, leave a thought at a verse, and keep one fire between you.
Free through your first book, all the way to the end
Ruth 1
14Again they wept aloud, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.
15“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; follow her back home.”
16But Ruth replied:
“Do not urge me to leave you
or to turn from following you.
For wherever you go, I will go,
and wherever you live, I will live;
your people will be my people,
and your God will be my God.
17Where you die, I will die,
and there I will be buried.
May the Lord punish me,
and ever so severely,
if anything but death
separates you and me.”
18When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to persuade her.
The promise
You will never be reading alone, and you will never be behind.
Reading Scripture with someone you love currently happens badly — over text message, out of sync, with a low hum of guilt about the days you missed.
So Ribbon has no plan, no schedule and no pace. Nothing in it counts. It is a room, not a program: warm, dim, unhurried, and occupied by someone else.
One · Presence
You can see who else is reading, while you read.
A soft form comes partway out of the right edge, carrying their face. Not a cursor, not a dot on a map — a person, half in the room with you.
Nothing crosses — on every platform, at every width.
Mark 4
38But Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke Him and said, “Teacher, don’t You care that we are perishing?”
39Then Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the sea. “Silence!” He commanded. “Be still!” And the wind died down, and it was perfectly calm.
Ruth is in Mark 4, and so are you.
- Nobody here
- The form is absent. Not greyed, not a placeholder, not “no one is reading.” Absence is the honest rendering of absence.
- Following
- Tap a portrait and you go where they are. A hairline runs down the right edge while your scroll is theirs. Any scroll of your own gives it back — no dialog, no asking.
- Being followed
- Visible, but small. Their portrait tucks against yours and one line reads Ruth is with you. There is no count of followers, in either direction.
- Reading quietly
- You see everyone. Nobody sees you. Your own form stays on screen as a small closed shape so you never forget you’re invisible.
- Thinking of you
- Press and hold their portrait. It fills with your ink. They get one soft tap on the shoulder, carrying nothing but your name — no message, no emoji, no count of how many.
Two · Notes left
Philippians 4
6Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
7And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Read this one on the bad Tuesday. It held.
8Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think on these things.
Hold a verse.
A thought, left at a verse, found later.
Hold a verse. Write, or speak — the waveform draws in your ink as you talk. The note stays where you left it: left, never sent, because being found later is the whole point.
- Voice
- A solid dot, six pixels, in the author’s ink.
- Written
- An open ring, the same size, the same ink.
- Unfound
- The mark breathes, over four seconds, slowly enough that it never reads as an alert.
- Found
- It steadies, and it stays. The record doesn’t disappear because you read it.
Notes open in place, never in a sheet. A sheet would take you out of the room, and this is the moment where staying in it matters most.
Three · The fire
One book, one fire, kept by the room.
Someone opened the book. It’s small and low, a few licks, working at it.
Someone has been reading. Full, active, irregular.
You’ve both been reading. Broad, even, a wide warm throw — almost calm.
Someone marked a quiet day. Coals under ash, a dim glow, still warm.
Keep scrolling · the fire answers to the room
Mark
catching
Banking is an act. It is never on the way to anywhere.
A fire reports a state, never a count.
No numbers, no fractions, no “six of twelve,” nowhere, ever. A countable goal is an accusation: it tells you exactly how much is missing and whose absence it was. An abstract one can only report a mood.
Its size is set by the book and never changes. What grows underneath is the bed of coals — because nobody can look at coals and work out how much is left. Where you’ve got to is shown by the text, and nowhere else.
Philemon is a single sitting. Isaiah is a winter. The fire is that size from the first verse, so the length of what you’ve taken on is something you feel rather than something you’re told.
Philemon
Philippians
Isaiah
catching
Just started, or just restarted after a long quiet.
burning
Someone has been reading.
steady
You have both been reading.
banked
A quiet day, marked on purpose. Covered and kept low, still alive.
You mark the quiet day yourself — the app never works it out, and never keeps a tally. The room simply sees that you did it: an act of care performed in public, not an excuse filed in private.
What you keep
The flame goes down. The light stays.
Finish a book and its fire settles into an ember. The shelf is every book you’ve read together, each the size its fire was, on a baseline that isn’t drawn.
Open one and the whole record is there: every note left, every highlight in its ink, the dates, and who read it. It isn’t a score, and it can’t be sorted — a shelf you can sort is a database.
One day this is a book.
Philemon
Ruth
Psalms
Mark
Jude
Philippians
The app
Six destinations, one root, and no tab bar anywhere.
The app opens in the room and stays there: the fire, who’s here, and one way in. Everything else is a push off it or a sheet over it — six places in the whole product, not fifteen.
No tab bar, because a tab bar claims the app has several equal purposes. Reading has no top bar and no toolbar until you ask for one.
For groups and ministries
A leader gets the same room as everyone else.
You make rooms and invite people into them. That’s the whole of the leader’s tooling. A room holds six; start another for the rest.
- No roster
- There is no dashboard and no attendance view. That would be a count of the most sensitive kind there is.
- Same view
- A leader sees their own rooms exactly as any member does — the fire, who’s here, the way in.
- Quiet billing
- Billing is per leader, and members never see it.
- Under 13
- A room with anyone under 13 needs an adult member, and voice notes aren’t transcribed.
Pricing
The first book is free, all the way through.
Not seven days. A trial makes you aware of the clock, and a clock is a count. You read a whole book together, keep the ember, and only then is there anything to decide.
| Your first book | Free — start to finish, with the ember at the end. |
|---|---|
| A room of two | About $8 a month. One person pays. The other never sees a paywall and never learns who pays. |
| A room of three to six | A flat monthly for the room, priced above the pair. Still one payer. |
| Youth ministry | Per leader, invoiced. |
If a room lapses
It pauses. Presence and new notes stop; reading, every note already left, every highlight and the whole shelf stay. Scripture is never locked, by anyone, for any reason.
Read it together.
Two ribbons in one book: two people, one text, different places, still bound together.