Creators run on references — the hook you screenshotted, the video essay you want to study, the thread that nailed a framing you’ve been circling for weeks. The problem is never collecting them; it’s that the collection becomes a graveyard: a camera roll of screenshots, a “Watch later” list four hundred deep, bookmarks nobody has opened since saving. Marqly is a research tool built for retrieval — it tags every save automatically and finds any reference by describing it, which is the only way a swipe file survives past a hundred entries.
Build a swipe file that organizes itself
Save any page in one click; when a research spiral leaves you with twenty tabs of examples, the tab saver captures them all at once. AI auto-tagging handles the filing, which is what keeps the system alive on the days you’re deep in production and would never stop to sort bookmarks.
The move that separates a swipe file from a link pile is highlighting. When a sales page has one killer line, highlight that exact sentence — six colors are available, so you can split hooks from CTAs from structural ideas — and attach a note about why it worked. Highlights sync to your library and persist on the page when you revisit, so studying your references later means seeing your own annotations on the craft, not rereading whole pages hunting for what impressed you.
Video references with the transcript attached
For YouTubers and video-first creators, the reference library is mostly other videos, and Marqly meets you on the watch page itself. The AI card on every YouTube video gives you a streaming summary with key sections — fast enough to vet whether a 30-minute video deserves study — plus books mentioned in the video, and a playback-synced transcript with one-click copy for lifting quotes into a script doc.
Hit Marqly’s bookmark button in YouTube’s action row and the video saves with its transcript attached. On Pro, you can go a step deeper and chat with the video: “how does this essay structure its cold open?” gets answered from the transcript, which turns competitive study from passive rewatching into direct interrogation.
Trend research you can query while drafting
Trend research has a short half-life; whatever you save on Monday needs to be findable when you script on Thursday. Marqly’s semantic search matches meaning across titles, content, highlights, and transcripts, so drafting-brain queries work: “that video about why faceless channels are dying” finds the save without a title. If you’ve only ever had keyword search, searching bookmarks with AI shows the difference in practice.
AI summaries speed up the weekly sweep — triage a batch of saved trend posts and industry pieces in minutes, then read only what earns it. And Pro’s chat with your saves is effectively a research assistant scoped to your own library: ask what angles you’ve already collected on a topic before you pitch yourself the same video twice.
Research also happens wherever the feed finds you. The iOS app and web app share one library with the extension, so the reference you save from your phone at midnight is searchable from your desktop the next morning. During writing sessions, the extension’s side panel earns its keep: search the swipe file in a panel beside your draft instead of alt-tabbing between the doc and a wall of reference tabs.
Boards keep active projects separate from the archive: one board per video or series, holding its references, highlights, and source links. A board can also be shared as a public page viewable without signup — a clean way to publish a “sources and further reading” link for your audience, or send a sponsor the research behind a claim.
Getting started
Install the extension — Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari; it holds a 4.8 rating on the Chrome Web Store. Import your existing mess: browser bookmark HTML exports, Pocket exports, and Raindrop.io collections all come in, so the “Watch later” era of your research isn’t lost. Let the AI tag the backlog and it becomes a searchable swipe file in one pass. Then the ongoing habit is one click per reference and a highlight on whatever earned the save.
Start free at app.marqly.com — no card required.
Who this isn’t for
Marqly is the research layer, not the production stack: it won’t schedule posts, edit video, manage a content calendar, or pull analytics, and it has no collaboration features — an editor or writing partner can view a public board but can’t work inside your library with you. Creators wanting an all-in-one operations hub should look elsewhere; the best AI bookmark manager roundup maps the landscape honestly. If the specific leak in your process is references you saved and can never find again, this plugs it.
Frequently asked questions
What makes Marqly good for a swipe file?
Two things swipe files usually lack: automatic organization and retrieval by vibe. Every saved landing page, thumbnail, or thread gets AI tags without manual filing, and semantic search finds saves by describing them — "the hook that opens with a confession" — rather than by title. Add highlights to mark the exact line that made you save something, and the swipe file stays useful at hundreds of entries.
Can I search inside the YouTube videos I save?
Yes, if you save them through Marqly's bookmark button on YouTube, which attaches the video's transcript to the save. Semantic search reads transcripts along with titles, content, and highlights, so you can find a video by something said at minute nineteen. There's also a transcript tab on every watch page — playback-synced, with one-click copy for pulling quotes into scripts.
Do I need the paid plan for content research?
Not to start. Saving, AI tagging, summaries, highlighting, boards, and semantic search are available on the free tier, with no card required. Pro — $48/year (about $4/month billed annually) or $8/month, with a 7-day trial — adds the chat features: asking questions answered from your saved content and chatting with YouTube videos through their transcripts, which is where script research gets noticeably faster.