All documentation

Getting help

Ask Margin Intelligence how something works, report a problem from inside the app and follow what happens to it, and check the status page when you can't tell whose fault it is.

Checked against the running product on 3 min readMarkdown

On this page

There are three places to go. For how something works, ask the assistant. If something is broken or missing, send a report from inside the app. If you can't tell whether the problem is on your side or ours, the status page answers that.

Ask Margin Intelligence#

Open Margin Intelligence with ⌘ J (Ctrl J on Windows and Linux) and ask how anything in The Margin works: "how do I share one note with my sister?", "why didn't my phone buzz?". It answers from these docs and links the page it used, so you can read the whole thing.

An outside assistant connected over MCP gets the same two help tools, search_help and get_help_article, so it can answer the same questions from the same pages. See Agents and MCP for how to connect one.

The docs are also published as markdown for any AI to read:

  • https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt lists every page, each with a link to its markdown
  • https://themarginapp.com/llms-full.txt is the product and tool reference in one file

Report a problem#

Settings→Help and reports is where reports start and where you see what happened to them. You can also open the same form from Report a problem in the menu under your picture at the top of the screen, or from the command palette. When something fails, the error screen has a Report this button that opens it too.

Send a report

  1. Choose what it is: Something broke, A request or A question, then Write it.
  2. Say how bad it is: App unusable, Something is broken, Annoying, or Idea.
  3. Write what happened in your own words, up to 4,000 characters.
  4. Press Send report. You get a short report id back, which you can quote if we email you about it.

Each report carries some diagnostics: the page you were on, your browser, which build of the app you have, recent console lines, and the sync state. Open Include diagnostics to read exactly what will be sent before you send it. It never includes the text of a note, card or message.

Under Your reports is everything you have sent, in your words, with where it got to: Received, Read, Being worked on, Fixed, or Not planned. Reports we decide against stay in the list with that status.

A reply to your report comes by email, to the address on your account. You can send up to five reports an hour.

The same page also has Getting started: Replay shows the welcome from your first day again, and a switch brings back the Start here list on your dashboard.

The status page#

themarginapp.com/status shows whether The Margin is working right now. It is public, so it opens even when you can't sign in.

It checks our monitoring once a minute and updates itself, so you don't need to reload it. Each part has its own line: the app, the database, sync, live presence, the assistant, assistant tools and outside assistants. Each line reads Running, Down, or Not known. Anything going wrong right now is listed under Open now.

The page lists only problems you would notice, such as the app, sync or the assistant being slow or down. Trouble with our own machines that doesn't reach you stays off it. If our monitoring itself stops answering, every line reads Not known and the page says so, rather than claiming all is well.

If sync is down, you can keep working. The Margin keeps your data on your device and catches up when the connection returns. See Working offline.

The phone app's Service status adds a row at the top for your phone: whether it is connected, when it last caught up, how many of your changes are still waiting to go up, and whether the server refused any. That is usually enough to tell whether the problem is your connection or ours.

If something is broken and the status page doesn't show it, tell us: send a report, or email [email protected].