When Shelf earns its keep.

Shelf Free has unlimited saves, full exports to Markdown, Notion, Obsidian, and Logseq, collections (1 level deep), and the habit features. It will not nag you. Most readers can stop here.

Shelf Pro is for readers who use Shelf every day and want the parts of the product that are computationally or operationally expensive — AI inference, multi-destination routing, library-scale operations — to be theirs. It’s €4.99/month, €49.99/year, or €99.99 once as a Founder Lifetime (capped at 200 buyers; once the cap is hit, the option closes).

AI auto-tag

When Pro is active and you’ve enabled AI in Settings → AI Assistant and ticked auto-tag on save, every save runs through a small classifier that returns three to six topical tags. The classifier prefers Chrome’s on-device Gemini Nano model — no network call, no API key, the inference runs in your browser. On machines where Nano is unavailable (older Chrome versions, ChromeOS Flex, low-RAM Linux), Shelf falls back to Groq’s hosted inference, and you supply your own Groq API key in Settings → AI Assistant.

Both the AI toggle and the auto-tag on save toggle are off by default. Turn them on once and Shelf remembers. The suggested tags are stored as aiTags on the item; on export they are merged with your own tags so there is no separate “AI” namespace.

You can also trigger inference manually on a saved item — Pro + AI must still be enabled in settings.

AI auto-summary

The same inference run produces a three-bullet summary, each bullet under 140 characters and factual. The summary is stored as aiSummary on the item and is included in every export — under an ## AI summary heading in the Markdown body, as a heading + bulleted list in Notion, as an [!summary] callout in Obsidian, and as a nested bullet list in Logseq.

Summaries are best-effort. They are wrong sometimes. Do not cite them; cite the original.

Unlimited destinations

Free readers have two destinations active at once. Pro readers have no limit. The same save fans out to as many configured destinations as you have.

Multi-database Notion routing

Free Notion users have one database. Pro Notion users can map each collection to its own database. The full setup is in the Notion docs.

Smart Rules

A Smart Rule is a condition → action that runs the moment a save lands in the library. Smart Rules are a Pro-only feature — Free readers can save and organise by hand; rules are the automation layer on top. The full reference is in the collections docs.

Bulk operations

Library Tools (Pro) lets you filter the library by a small set of criteria and run a single action across every matching item:

— Filter by hostname (substring match), kind (article / video / podcast / page), and unread-only. — Add a tag to every matching item in one shot. — Delete every matching item.

That’s the whole tool — no query language, no move/re-send actions in v1. Use the preview to see how many items the filter would touch before you run the action.

Library backup

Library Tools → Export library writes a single ZIP file containing every saved item’s Markdown, every collection definition, every Smart Rule, your AI configuration, and the active destinations. The ZIP is portable — drag it onto Library Tools → Import library on another machine and you have your library back.

This is the answer to what happens if Shelf shuts down and what happens if Chrome corrupts its storage. Run it once a month. Two seconds.

Activating a license

After purchasing on the pricing page, LemonSqueezy emails you a license key. Open Shelf’s Options page → Billing → paste the key → Activate.

Activation calls api.lemonsqueezy.com/v1/licenses/activate from your browser with the key and an opaque instance label (something like Shelf · Windows · 2026-05-12). LemonSqueezy returns a status; Shelf stores it locally. From this device, Pro is now on.

Each license has a finite number of activations — five for Pro Monthly/Yearly, unlimited for Founder Lifetime. To free a slot, Billing → Deactivate on the device you no longer use.

The license re-validates weekly in the background. If a check fails — chargeback, deactivation, expiry, server-side disable — Pro switches off immediately and you’re back on Free until you re-activate. Your library, your exports, and your settings stay exactly where they are in chrome.storage.local; only the Pro-gated features turn off.