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Answers/The movement queries

File over app: why your data should outlive every program that touches it

'File over app' is a slogan borrowed from the Obsidian community and worth adopting more broadly: your data belongs in a plain, open, human-readable file, and the app is just something that opens it. When the app is gone, the file is still there. When the format is proprietary, the app going away takes the file with it.

The practical test

Can you open the file in a text editor and see something meaningful? If it's a markdown note, yes. If it's a Notion export or a proprietary .journal binary, no. The test isn't 'is it perfect', it's 'is there a path'.

How this plays with encryption

Encryption looks like the opposite of 'file over app' — a sealed bundle isn't human-readable. It isn't, until you decrypt it; and then it's plain markdown or plain PDFs. The vault's job is to make the plaintext files unavailable when they should be unavailable, not to replace them with a proprietary container.

Elba's format is deliberately boring: AES-256-GCM, PBKDF2, a standard header. Any competent programmer can implement a reader in a few hundred lines — and after 1 January 2030 the reference implementation is public.

Questions people actually ask

Doesn't every app want lock-in?
Yes — which is why 'file over app' is a discipline, not a default.
What formats are safe?
Plain text, markdown, PDF/A, standard image formats, and standard audio/video codecs. Avoid anything only one app opens.

Take the island

Elba is one HTML file. It runs locally in a Chromium browser, seals a folder with AES-256-GCM, never phones home, and becomes open source on 1 January 2030.

  1. €49MMXXVI· now ·
  2. €39MMXXVII2027
  3. €29MMXXVIII2028
  4. €19MMXXIX2029
  5. FreeMMXXX2030

the price falls each year · free to all 1 jan 2030

Take the island — €49
pay once · no account · nothing leaves

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