Local-first
Local-first is a software design in which the canonical copy of a user’s data lives in ordinary files on their own device and the application is a client on top of it, so the data remains usable if the application or its vendor goes away.
- Not the same as
- Private, or offline-only
- The test
- What is left without the app?
- The cost
- No live co-editing
The word is usually used to mean the wrong thing
Most of the time “local-first” is deployed as a privacy claim: nothing leaves your machine. That is a different property, and conflating them makes both harder to reason about. A tool can be local-first and still send text to a model provider when you ask it to. A tool can run everything on-device and still trap your work in a proprietary database.
The question local-first actually answers is: what do you still have when this software stops existing?
The price of the right-hand column: no server to merge two people’s edits, and no live co-editing.
Three tests that separate the real thing from the label. The bottom line is the price of passing them.
- Can another program open your data today? Not export it — open it. If the answer requires an export step, the app owns your data and is lending it to you.
- Is there an import? An import step means a second copy that will drift, and a decision you cannot reverse without the same work again.
- What happens on the day you stop paying? If the answer is “read-only access” or “export within 30 days”, the files were never yours in the sense that matters.
Local-first also costs something. You inherit sync conflicts, because there is no server arbitrating. Collaboration is harder. There is no “log in from a friend’s laptop”. These are real trade-offs, not oversights, and if you need multiplayer editing they are disqualifying.
How MindMax handles it
MindMax opens a folder you already have. There is no import step and no conversion: your notes stay Markdown, your PDFs stay PDFs, and what the app writes for you — notes, translations, drafts — is written as ordinary files into that same folder.
That means the three tests pass by construction. Another editor can open the folder right now. There is nothing to migrate because nothing was migrated in. Stop paying and the files are unchanged on your disk, readable without MindMax.
On the privacy question specifically, which is the separate one: reading, annotating and searching your own documents is local work. Using an AI feature sends material to a model provider, as any hosted model does — unless you point MindMax at a model running on your own machine. The precise description of what is sent is on the privacy page.
Common questions
What does local-first mean?
That your data lives as ordinary files on your own device and the app works on top of them, so the data stays usable if the app or the company behind it goes away. It is a statement about ownership, not about whether anything is sent over the network.
Is local-first the same as private?
No. A local-first app can still send text to an AI provider when you use an AI feature, and a fully on-device app can still lock your work in a proprietary format. The two properties have to be checked separately.
What happens to my files if I stop using MindMax?
Nothing. They are the same Markdown notes, PDFs and other files in the same folder, readable by any other program. There was no import, so there is nothing to export.