The name and status other people see.
A virtual library reading room
Your desk gets a laptop or a notebook. You can switch anytime from the top bar.
No sign-up · your timer starts when you sit down
A virtual library you can walk into. Take a seat, and the clock starts. No sign-up, no schedule, no camera.
Mogakgong is a reading room in your browser, modeled on an old gothic university library: long oak desks, green lamps, tall windows. Everyone in it is doing their own thing. Some people are coding, some are studying, nobody is presenting anything. You just see who else is here, how long they've been at it, and the lamp at their seat glowing.
The name comes from Korean. Mogakgong is short for mo-yeo-seo gak-ja gong-bu, "gather, then each study on your own." Its older sibling, mogakco, is the coding version, and in Korea it's a common way for developers to meet up.
If you've ever gotten more done at a library or a coffee shop than at home, you already know the effect. Having other people quietly working nearby makes it easier to start and harder to drift. People with ADHD call it body doubling, and plenty of people without ADHD rely on it too.
Most online versions of this are video calls you have to book. Here there is nothing to schedule and no camera. You open the link and sit down next to whoever is already working.
The developer who loses focus at 2 a.m. working alone. The student who can't afford a quiet study space, or just can't face getting dressed for one. The grad student on the third week of the same chapter. No experience or setup needed.
A virtual library reading room in your browser. You pick coding or studying, walk to an empty seat, and sit down. Your timer runs for as long as you stay seated, and you can see everyone else who is working right now.
No. There is no sign-up, no camera and no microphone. You get an automatic name, and you can change it and set a short status above your head from your profile.
No. The timer does not stop at 25 minutes. It keeps counting until you stand up and picks up where it left off when you sit back down. If you come back on the same device the same day, your time carries over.
Only on your break. While you are seated the chat is off; stand up to say something, and your timer pauses while you do.
Yes. Open the link and walk in.
Up to 80 in a room. There are 80 seats in the reading room and 32 in the quiet room with cubicle desks. When a room fills up, new visitors go to the next one.
Weather data by Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0)