Why not files over app?
Whenever a bookmarking or read-it-later app comes up, someone asks why it isn't just a folder of files. It's a fair question. File over app, as Steph Ango put it, says your files matter more than the tools you use to make them: keep everything as plain files, so no app can hold it hostage, and your work outlives any tool.
It's a good principle, and for writing it works beautifully. A note, a draft or a journal entry is a document you author, and a text file is a perfect home for it.
What people actually want
When I hear it about bookmarks, though, I don't think people want files for their own sake. They want two things:
- Their library shouldn't be locked in. If the app goes away, or they move on, everything they saved comes with them.
- Other tools should be able to work with it. Scripts, other apps and now AI agents should be able to read what they saved and add to it.
Files are one way to get both. They aren't the only way, and for a library of saved things they aren't the best one. DoubleMemory gives you both without turning your library into a folder of files.
Portability
You can export the whole library any time. Coming in, DoubleMemory imports Safari bookmarks and your Reading List, and the import tools turn exports from Pocket, Readwise, Omnivore and mymind into its JSON format, right in your browser, without uploading anything. Anything else can be mapped to that JSON and imported too.
Integration
On the Mac, the dbm command line lets you, your scripts and your local AI agents save, search, list, read, update and import, with JSON in and out. Every command can answer in JSON, so an agent can work with your library as reliably as you can.
It talks to the running app rather than opening the database behind its back. You and your agents work on the same live library at the same time: something an agent saves shows up in the app right away and syncs like anything you saved yourself.
A format that lasts
Underneath, the library is a SQLite database. SQLite is one of the few formats the Library of Congress recommends for preserving datasets, alongside XML, JSON and CSV. It is open, well documented and readable by countless tools.
Sync without conflicted copies
A folder of files syncs file by file. Edit the same file on two devices before they sync and you get a "conflicted copy" to sort out by hand, or a change that quietly loses.
The store keeps a history of every change instead, and sync sends those changes item by item through your iCloud. Devices working on different items never step on each other, and there's no conflicted copy of your library to reconcile.
The right shape for a library
Files are a great interface for documents you write. A library of thousands of links, images and notes, with tags, previews, notes and archive state, is closer to a database. It's better served by a durable one that you can export from and script against, and that keeps itself in sync.
For why the library lives on your devices and in your own iCloud in the first place, see Why local-first is the only sensible architecture for a bookmarking app.