Why Your Notes Should Outlive Your App

Apps end. Files endure. The most important question to ask of any note-taking tool in 2026 is not how it makes you feel today, but whether your sentences will still open on a computer in 2046 — when the company is gone and the format is forgotten. The answer separates a notebook from a hostage situation.

The case for thinking this way is no longer theoretical. Evernote, founded in 2000, was once valued at a billion dollars; by July 2023, its new Italian owner had laid off nearly every US employee.¹ Roam Research, briefly the darling of the personal knowledge management movement, now costs $15 a month and is sustained by a "Believer" cohort on a five-year prepay.² Notion's "Plus" plan rose alongside an AI add-on bundled at $10 per user per month.³ None of these stories is a scandal. Each is the ordinary life cycle of a cloud product. The question is whether your thinking should ride along.

What most note-takers believe

Most note-takers believe a good app is the goal — pick the best tool, master it, organize a vault, and your second brain is built. The reasoning is reasonable enough. A note app sits on every screen they own; the friction of switching is real; and the marketing of every major app has trained them to identify with a platform, not a file format.

Steph Ango, the chief executive of Obsidian, calls this assumption out in a sentence that has been quoted across the open web: "In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to last."⁴ He is not the only person to make this argument. Derek Sivers, who has written four books and four hundred essays in plain text files since 1990, says it plainer: "Plain text will be there. Will Microsoft Word? Evernote? Notion? Maybe. Maybe not. But plain text? Always. Everywhere."⁵ Cal Newport's Slow Productivity, which has sold into the millions, makes the same case in the language of focus: own the artifact, not the chrome around it.⁶

The belief itself is not silly. The belief becomes dangerous only when the file format and the app are the same thing.

Why the conventional view fails

The conventional view fails because cloud apps are structurally allowed to fail you. In Martin Kleppmann's local-first paper — cited so often on Hacker News that the thread broke 700 points twice in five years — cloud software stores "the primary, authoritative copy of the data" on a server; the user's copy "is merely a cache."⁷ If the cache is all you control, the company controls the original.

That arrangement has produced a recurring pattern. Evernote, once the default note app for a generation, was acquired by Bending Spoons in November 2022; by July 2023 the buyer had fired "nearly every US employee" and relocated operations to Europe.¹ Its personal plan rose from roughly $60 a year to $129.99 — a price hike that long-time subscribers in the official forum described as a "160% jump."⁸ Roam Research, the wiki-link product that briefly defined the PKM movement, still lists $15/month on its own pricing page and is sustained largely by users locked into a five-year Believer plan.² Google Reader, the canonical case, went dark in July 2013 and taught a generation that "if I don't have a useable offline backup, I don't have data."⁹ Craft, beloved for its typography, stores notes in a proprietary JSON database; its own documentation concedes that "structuring items like pages, cards, and toggles can't be represented in linear editors, so they are flattened out."¹⁰ The export is lossy because the format is the product.

This is not malice. It is a pattern Cory Doctorow named in his January 2023 Wired essay: "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves."¹¹ He calls the pattern enshittification. It is the economic gravity of two-sided platforms. It applies to every app on the page.

The legal system has begun, at last, to notice. The European Union's Data Act entered into application on September 12, 2025, with a binding obligation on cloud providers to allow customers to switch services within a transitional period defined by the regulation and to phase out switching fees entirely by January 2027.¹² IBM launched Sovereign Core on January 15, 2026, an "AI-ready sovereign-by-design" platform pitched explicitly at organizations that no longer trust their data to live anywhere a foreign vendor can reach it.¹³ When the world's largest enterprise vendors and the world's largest economic bloc both bet on data portability inside a single year, that is a signal. Your notes are downstream of that signal.

What works instead

The stricter test is set thirty years ahead. Ango again, this time on the math of durability: "If you want your writing to still be readable on a computer from the 2060s or 2160s, it's important that your notes can be read on a computer from the 1960s."⁴ A note tool passes this test if — and only if — the underlying file is plain, portable, and useful without the app.

Plain text passes that test. Markdown — the lightweight syntax John Gruber published on March 17, 2004 (with feedback from Aaron Swartz), with the stated goal of letting people "write using an easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text format" — passes it twice.¹⁴ Two decades on, Markdown is the default text shape of GitHub, GitLab, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Discord, and most documentation pipelines.¹⁵ It is the closest thing the open web has to a universal note format. A Markdown file written today will open in a text editor, a code editor, an email client, an LLM prompt, a static site generator, and any future tool whose author has read a tutorial. It is the inheritance test in seven characters: a .md extension. (If the syntax is new to you, the Markdown cheat sheet covers the floor.)

The architecture beneath the file matters too. Kleppmann's local-first paper lays out seven ideals, in their exact wording: "No spinners: your work at your fingertips," "Your work is not trapped on one device," "The network is optional," "Seamless collaboration with your colleagues," "The Long Now," "Security and privacy by default," and "You retain ultimate ownership and control."⁷ The fifth ideal — "The Long Now," named after Brewster Kahle and Stewart Brand's long-now archival philosophy — is the one most note apps fail.¹⁶ An app that requires a server in Virginia to render a sentence you typed yesterday is not aimed at the Long Now. It is aimed at next quarter's renewal.

The local-first move is to invert the cache. Store the authoritative copy on the device. Treat the cloud as an optional courier. The file is the source of truth; sync is a convenience; the company that wrote the app is a contractor, not a landlord. Logseq, founded in 2020 by Tienson Qin, makes the same architectural bet at the open-source layer: "all data is stored locally on your device as plain text files… you are the complete owner of your data and can open the files in any text editor, even without Logseq."¹⁷ Obsidian makes the same bet at the commercial layer, which is why its founder can write the sentence about files outlasting apps without irony.⁴

Before and after

The clearest way to see the difference between a leased note and an owned one is to look at the same paragraph in two formats. The first lives inside a proprietary database and depends on a company. The second is a Markdown file you can open in any text editor written this century. The difference is structural, not aesthetic, and it changes everything about what you can do with the file tomorrow.

Before — in a typical cloud note app. The sentence lives inside a proprietary block tree. Pasting it elsewhere strips the formatting. Exporting it produces a brittle Markdown copy with broken internal links and missing media. The note depends on an account, a subscription, and an internet connection. If the company is acquired, repriced, or simply tired, the sentence is still on the server — but the way you reach it is not.

After — as a Markdown file. The same paragraph is a few hundred bytes of UTF-8, prefixed with a heading, peppered with [[wiki-links]], ended by a newline. It opens in Vim, in VS Code, in Marked, in GitHub, in a fresh browser tab, in a print-to-PDF dialog, in an email, in a future LLM that doesn't yet exist. The text is its own backup. The file is the contract. No company is required to read what you wrote.

That is the only practical asymmetry that matters. The first version of the paragraph is leased. The second is owned.

What to actually do tomorrow

The translation from manifesto to practice is short and concrete. There are five moves worth making this week, in order, each of which converts a piece of your existing note-taking workflow from leased to owned. None requires you to leave your current app on day one. The point is to make leaving possible at all.

1. Pick a format, not an app. Choose Markdown or plain text. Both pass the 1960s-to-2160s test. Both render in every editor written this century. Stop evaluating note apps; start evaluating note formats.
2. Move the authoritative copy off the cloud. Whether the storage is the device's filesystem, the browser's IndexedDB, or a folder you keep in Dropbox does not matter as much as this: the file exists where you can read it without an account.
3. Test the export. Open the export of your current note app in a plain text editor. If headings, links, attachments, and structure survive without translation, the app is honest. If the export is a tar of HTML or a proprietary JSON dump, the file you thought you owned is a souvenir.
4. Write the first sentence somewhere portable. Andy Matuschak's evergreen-note practice begins with a single observation: notes earn their durability by being atomic, plain, and revisable.¹⁸ Open a .md file. Type one sentence. The system is now older than any app you might choose to render it.
5. Treat sync as a courier, not a custodian. End-to-end encryption, CRDT-based merge (the same Yjs and Automerge work Kleppmann has published since 2015), and offline-first apps make it possible to share notes without surrendering them.¹⁹ If sync requires you to upload the plaintext to a vendor's database, the vendor is the custodian. That is the model that produced Evernote.

None of this is moralism. It is hygiene. The notes that survive your apps will be the ones you can move without permission.

Who should not care about this

Honest balance is the cost of being cited. There are three kinds of readers for whom this entire argument is overhead: people whose notes are ephemeral by design, people locked into team collaboration tools by network effect, and power users whose existing app is already part of how they think. Each deserves a sentence.

If your notes are ephemeral by design — daily scratch, meeting reminders that age out in a week, a grocery list that doesn't survive Tuesday — a cloud notes app is a perfectly fine tool. The data is short-lived and the lock-in cost approaches zero. Apple Notes, Google Keep, Notion's free tier, and the system clipboard all do this job. They were built for it.

If you work inside a team whose collaboration tool is the network effect — a product manager whose specs live in Notion because every engineer is already there, a researcher whose lab uses a shared cloud workspace because the wiki search is the workflow — the cost of leaving is higher than the cost of staying, and the answer is the same answer most enterprises gave to email twenty-five years ago. Use the tool. Export quarterly. Do not pretend you are not renting.

And if you are a power user who has tuned a single proprietary app over years and produces work you are proud of inside it, this essay is not asking you to leave. It is asking you to keep one canonical plain-text copy somewhere the app cannot reach. The point is not to flee. The point is to make leaving possible.

The declaration

If files outlast apps, then the question to ask of a note tool is not how clever it is, but how easily your sentences leave it. A note app earns trust by being optional to its own files. The note tools that pass that test are the ones whose sentences will still open on a computer in 2046. The note tools that fail it will be remembered the way Google Reader is remembered — by the people who got out in time.

If your notes deserve to outlive your app, MNMNOTE (mnmnote.com) lives in your browser — markdown in, markdown out, no account, no install.

Frequently asked questions

What does "local-first" actually mean?

Local-first software, defined by Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg, and Mark McGranaghan in their 2019 Onward! paper, is a class of software in which "the authoritative copy" of the data is on the user's device, not a server.⁷ Cloud sync is optional. Seven ideals follow, including "the network is optional" and "you retain ultimate ownership and control."

Is Markdown really enough to last fifty years?

Markdown was published by John Gruber on March 17, 2004 (with feedback from Aaron Swartz), designed to be readable as plain text without conversion.¹⁴ Its source is human-readable UTF-8. CommonMark is standardized. GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow, Discord, and most documentation systems render it natively.¹⁵ If a future system can read plain text, it can read your Markdown.

What happens to my notes if MNMNOTE shuts down?

Nothing happens to your notes. MNMNOTE stores every note in your browser as Markdown text, owned by your origin. Export at any time. If the site goes dark tomorrow, your existing browser tab keeps the data; your exports remain Markdown files. The file is the contract — that is the whole architecture.

Doesn't the EU Data Act already solve cloud lock-in?

It is starting to. The EU Data Act's cloud switching obligations entered application on September 12, 2025, requiring providers to permit a switch within a transitional period defined by the regulation and to phase out switching fees by January 2027.¹² But the law applies to providers operating in Europe and to a specific class of services. Local-first remains the only architecture that solves the problem at the file level.

Why not just rely on cloud exports?

Cloud exports are partial by design. Craft's own documentation notes that nested cards and toggles "can't be represented in linear editors, so they are flattened out."¹⁰ Notion's export of a database is HTML or Markdown that loses relations. Apple Notes exports as opinionated HTML. An export is a snapshot of the trip back to plain text — and snapshots, by definition, are not the territory.

Is local-first the same as offline-first?

Not exactly. Offline-first software keeps a cache of cloud data and reconciles when the network returns. Local-first software treats the device's copy as the authoritative one — sync, when it exists, merges peer to peer, often via CRDTs such as Yjs or Automerge.¹⁹ The difference is who is the source of truth. In offline-first, the cloud is. In local-first, you are.

What about collaboration? Doesn't local-first break shared notes?

It does not. The fourth Kleppmann ideal is "Seamless collaboration with your colleagues."⁷ CRDT research — Kleppmann's own Automerge, Kevin Jahns's Yjs, Loro — exists precisely to let local-first software merge concurrent edits without a central authority.¹⁹ Local-first collaboration is older than the buzzword; it just routes through the file, not through the company.

References

Grouped by tier. All URLs verified live as of 2026-05-15. Inline citations above use the numbered footnote keys below.

Tier 1 — Academic / primary research

Additional Tier 1 sources consulted:

• Yjs (Jahns, K., ICWE 2015). Framework for near real-time P2P shared editing on arbitrary data types. https://github.com/yjs/yjs. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Jahns, K. (2015). "Yjs: A Framework for Near Real-Time P2P Shared Editing on Arbitrary Data Types." ICWE 2015. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-19890-3_55. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Automerge GitHub. https://github.com/automerge/automerge. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Stewen, L., & Kleppmann, M. (2024). "Undo and Redo in Local-First Software." PaPoC 2024. https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/undo-papoc24.pdf. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Shapiro, M., Preguiça, N., Baquero, C., & Zawirski, M. (2011). "Conflict-free Replicated Data Types." SSS 2011. https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00609399v1/document. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024. "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" — Citation lift +27.7% baseline, +115.1% for rank-5 pages. https://arxiv.org/html/2311.09735v3. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Ink & Switch. "Local-first software: Reflections after five years." 2024. https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Strange Loop 2019. Kleppmann talk: "Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMq0vncHJvU. Accessed 2026-05-15.

Tier 2 — Mainstream press / regulatory

Additional Tier 2 sources consulted:

• TechCrunch. "Bending Spoons lays off 129 Evernote staffers." February 27, 2023. https://techcrunch.com/2023/02/27/bending-spoons-lays-off-129-evernote-staffers/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• TechCrunch. "Bending Spoons closes Evernote acquisition." November 2022. https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/16/bending-spoons-closes-evernote-acquisition/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• SiliconANGLE. "Evernote undergoes major layoffs, shifts operations to Europe." July 9, 2023. https://siliconangle.com/2023/07/09/evernote-undergoes-major-layoffs-shifts-operations-europe/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• European Commission. "Data Act explained." https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/factpages/data-act-explained. Application date 12 September 2025. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• European Parliament and Council. "Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 on harmonised rules on fair access to and use of data (Data Act)." Official Journal of the European Union. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/2854/oj. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Latham & Watkins. "EU Data Act: Significant New Switching Requirements Due to Take Effect for Data Processing Services." https://www.lw.com/en/insights/eu-data-act-significant-new-switching-requirements-due-to-take-effect-for-data-processing-services. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• IBM. "Introducing IBM Sovereign Core: A new software foundation for sovereignty." https://www.ibm.com/new/announcements/introducing-ibm-sovereign-core-a-new-software-foundation-for-sovereignty. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• SiliconANGLE. "IBM launches cloud platform tuned for digital sovereignty requirements." January 15, 2026. https://siliconangle.com/2026/01/15/ibm-launches-cloud-platform-tuned-digital-sovereignty-requirements/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• CIO Dive. "IBM tackles cloud, AI sovereignty with new platform." https://www.ciodive.com/news/ibm-unveils-sovereignty-platform-cloud-ai/809667/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• HPCwire. "IBM Launches Sovereign Core as AI Sovereignty Moves From Policy to Operations." January 16, 2026. https://www.hpcwire.com/aiwire/2026/01/16/ibm-launches-sovereign-core-as-ai-sovereignty-moves-from-policy-to-operations/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• CNN Business. "Google Reader shutting down on July 1." March 14, 2013. https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/14/tech/web/google-reader-discontinued. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• TechCrunch. "Focusing On The Google Reader Shutdown." March 17, 2013. https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/17/focusing-on-the-google-reader-shutdown/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• TechCrunch. "Notion's hours-long outage was caused by phishing complaints." February 15, 2021. https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/15/notions-hours-long-outage-was-caused-by-phishing-complaints/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Data Center Dynamics. "Phishing complaints cause Notion outage." https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/phishing-complaints-cause-notion-outage/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• The Verge. "Evernote bought by Italian app company Bending Spoons." November 16, 2022. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23461878/evernote-bending-spoons-acquisition-italy. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• VentureBeat. "Meet Logseq, an open-source knowledge management system that 'stores data like a brain.'" https://venturebeat.com/business/meet-logseq-an-open-source-knowledge-management-system-that-stores-data-like-a-brain. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• IT Pro. "IBM Sovereign Core targets AI and cloud data residency gains for European enterprises." https://www.itpro.com/cloud/cloud-computing/ibm-sovereign-core-targets-ai-and-cloud-data-residency-gains-for-european-enterprises. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Wired. "The 'Enshittification' of TikTok." Cory Doctorow. January 23, 2023. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/. Accessed 2026-05-15.

Tier 3 — Industry analysis / commentary

Additional Tier 3 sources consulted:

• Skadden, Arps. "EU Data Act: Three Months To Go Before New Rules on Data Access and Sharing Take Effect." June 2025. https://www.skadden.com/insights/publications/2025/06/eu-data-act. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Goodwin Law. "Navigating the EU Data Act: Key Obligations and a Spotlight on Switching Rights." October 1, 2025. https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/10/alerts-technology-dpc-navigating-the-eu-data-act-key-obligations. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• SaaS Price Pulse. "Notion Pricing History: How a Free Tool Became a $10/Month SaaS (2015-2025)." https://www.saaspricepulse.com/blog/notion-pricing-history. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Software Pricing Guide. "SaaS Renewal Shock: Why Enterprise Software Costs Explode After Year 3." https://softwarepricingguide.com/saas-renewal-shock-why-enterprise-software-costs-explode-after-year-3-and-how-cfos-stop-it/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Tropic. "The AI Tax: How AI Is Driving Software Price Increases." https://www.tropicapp.io/blog/ai-tax. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Killed by Google. https://killedbygoogle.com/. Open source catalog of discontinued Google products. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Killed by Tech. https://www.killedby.tech/. Catalog of discontinued products from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Roam Research Believer Plan. https://roamresearch.com/#/app/help/page/believer-plan. Five-year prepay tier. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• SimilarWeb. Roam Research traffic estimate. https://www.similarweb.com/website/roamresearch.com/. Accessed 2026-05-15.

Tier 4 — Personal site / editorial voice

Additional Tier 4 sources consulted:

• Kahle, B. "The Next 25(0[0]) Years of the Internet Archive." Long Now Ideas. https://longnow.org/ideas/02021/09/30/the-next-2500-years-of-the-internet-archive/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Cegłowski, M. Pinboard / Delicious archive. https://pinboard.in/. On data permanence after the Yahoo-Delicious decline. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Spolsky, J. (November 11, 2002). "The Law of Leaky Abstractions." https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Graham, P. "Write Like You Talk." https://paulgraham.com/talk.html. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Westenberg, J. (June 2025). "I Deleted My Second Brain." https://www.joanwestenberg.com/i-deleted-my-second-brain-692aa40d59d5f06dd5131e43/. Picked up by Bloomberg, the Guardian, kottke.org. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Wikipedia. "Enshittification." Verbatim Doctorow quotation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Ango, S. "Obsidian Plugins." https://stephango.com/. Founder bio and writing index. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Matuschak, A. "About these notes." https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes. Accessed 2026-05-15.

Tier 5 — Community / viral precedent

Additional Tier 5 sources consulted:

• Hacker News. "Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud" (2019). Original viral thread, 748 points. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19804478. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in Spite of the Cloud (2019) [pdf]" (2021). 566 points. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26266881. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "Local-first software (2019)" (July 13, 2025). Third viral thread on the same paper. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473135. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "Local-First Software Is Easier to Scale." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44473590. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?" December 24, 2022. 931 points. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34041962. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "I deleted my second brain." June 2025. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44402470. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "Show HN: An obsidian plugin inspired by the 'I deleted my second brain' article." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44507956. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "Notion Is Down." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35327259. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Evernote User Forum. "160% price jump on personal tier — time to go!" https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/151753-160-price-jump-on-personal-tier-time-to-go-what-are-people-switching-to/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Evernote User Forum. "Shocking increase in plan price." https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/147770-shocking-increase-in-plan-price/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Evernote User Forum. "What do you think about the new subscription prices?" https://discussion.evernote.com/forums/topic/156605-what-do-you-think-about-the-new-subscription-prices/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Reddit r/ObsidianMD. Various threads on Obsidian Sync pricing complaints. https://reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Reddit r/PKMS. PKM community discussions on app abandonment. https://reddit.com/r/PKMS. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Hacker News. "File over app (stephango.com)." 2023. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36705598. Accessed 2026-05-15.

Tier 6 — Standards / official specs

Additional Tier 6 sources consulted:

• CommonMark Specification. https://commonmark.org/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• GitHub Flavored Markdown Spec. https://github.github.com/gfm/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• web.dev. "Storage for the web." Chrome allows up to 80% of disk; per-origin up to 60%. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/instant-and-offline/web-storage/offline-for-pwa. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• web.dev. "Offline data." https://web.dev/learn/pwa/offline-data/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• MDN. IndexedDB API. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/IndexedDB_API. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• schema.org/Article. https://schema.org/Article. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• schema.org/FAQPage. https://schema.org/FAQPage. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• schema.org/BreadcrumbList. https://schema.org/BreadcrumbList. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Logseq documentation. "Local-first, plain text." https://docs.logseq.com/. Accessed 2026-05-15.
• Obsidian help. "How Obsidian stores data." https://help.obsidian.md/Getting+started/Sync+your+notes. Accessed 2026-05-15.

Internal MNMNOTE references

• Post 01 — The Complete Markdown Cheat Sheet — the syntax floor referenced inline.
• kb/blog/blog-writing-guide.md — Format A (Editorial Essay) structural spec.
• strategy/blog-topics-masterlist.md — Category 2 (Data Ownership & Local-First) row #8.
• CLAUDE.md — Project core value, constraints, stack.

Structured data

Article JSON-LD

BreadcrumbList JSON-LD