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What is Anchorline
Anchorline is a system for tracking things that change over time.
It is built for situations where understanding how you arrived at the current state matters as much as the current state itself. This includes money, collections, assets, projects, inventory, and similar systems.
Many tools focus on editing values until they look right. Anchorline focuses on recording what actually happened. When something changes or needs correcting, you record the next action instead of overwriting the past.
This keeps history visible while still providing a clear and usable present view.
How Anchorline thinks about change
Most tracking tools allow values to be edited directly. A number updates, a row changes, and the previous state is lost.
In Anchorline, changes are recorded as actions. Each action becomes part of a timeline. Corrections are made by adding new actions rather than hiding earlier ones.
This makes changes easier to understand later. You can see what changed, when it changed, and how one decision led to another.
Logs and events
Everything in Anchorline is organized around logs.
A log represents a single stream of related activity. Each action taken within a log is recorded as an event. The current state of a log is derived from the sequence of its events.
You do not edit a log directly. You add events to it. The present state is always the result of its history.
Two kinds of logs
Anchorline uses two types of logs to cover most real world tracking needs.
Balanced logs
Balanced logs are used for things where inflow and outflow must remain consistent.
Money is the most common example, but time, points, credits, and other quantities can also be tracked this way. Every change is accounted for, and nothing appears or disappears without an explanation.
Collection logs
Collection logs are used for things that exist as individual items.
Books, assets, equipment, tasks, or inventory are all examples. Each item has its own identity, and changes to that item are tracked over time.
Both log types follow the same core structure, which makes it possible to combine them and link them together when needed.
Why this matters
By recording change instead of overwriting it, Anchorline makes systems easier to trust.
You can answer questions like when something changed, why it changed, and what decisions led to the current state. Mistakes do not need to be hidden in order to move forward.
Everything else in Anchorline builds on this foundation.