Why files still matter
Draft for feedback — please mark anything unclear.
Every few years someone announces that the file is dead. Documents will live in apps, the argument goes, and nobody will think about where their words are actually stored.
And yet the humble file keeps coming back. It is the one format every tool can read, every backup can copy, and every person can hand to someone else without asking permission.
The case for plain text
A Markdown file written today will open in thirty years. It needs no account, no subscription and no particular company to survive. That durability is easy to overlook until the day an app shuts down and takes your notes with it.
Plain text is also the native language of AI agents. When you ask an assistant to draft, edit or publish something, the most reliable thing it can hand back is a file.
What this chapter argues
The rest of this chapter makes three claims: that files are the right unit of ownership, that publishing should be as easy as saving, and that feedback should land on the words themselves rather than in a separate thread.
Ownership
If you hold the file, you hold the work. Everything else is a view onto it.
Publishing
Saving and publishing should feel like the same act. The gap between them is where drafts go to die.
Feedback
Comments belong next to the words they are about. A reviewer should be able to select a sentence and say what they think, without an account and without leaving the page.
Next steps
Read the next chapter, or leave a comment on anything here that is unclear.
