promises, not features
Features get added and removed. These are the commitments hushvault is built on — the things that will still be true in every future version, because the architecture doesn't work any other way.
Your files are the truth
A vault is a plain folder of Markdown, PDFs, and images. That's not a storage format — it's the whole design. The search index is a disposable cache kept outside your vault: delete it and hushvault rebuilds it from your files, byte for byte the same. Your tags live in each note's frontmatter. PDF highlights live in a small JSON file right next to the PDF, and move when it moves. Nothing you create exists only inside the app.
The test we hold ourselves to: delete the app and you lose nothing. Your folder still opens in any editor, any file manager, any future tool — including whatever replaces hushvault one day.
Nothing ever leaves your device
No telemetry, no analytics, no accounts, no crash reporters — and no network calls at all, not even a check for updates. That's why the release notes page exists: it is the update channel, because the app will never phone home to ask. Search, OCR of scanned documents, and every PDF tool run entirely on your machine.
No sync — on purpose
A sync service would mean our servers, our accounts, our outage taking your notes down. Instead, a vault is just a folder — so it already works with whatever you trust: iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing, a git repo, a USB stick. hushvault never competes with your storage; it reads and writes plain files and gets out of the way.
Deletes go through the Trash
Nothing in hushvault hard-deletes your data. Removing a file — even in a batch — sends it to the system Trash, recoverable like anything else. The PDF tools write new files next to the originals and never overwrite an input; replacing an original is an explicit opt-in, and it goes through the Trash too.
Bought once, yours
One purchase covers macOS and Windows, with free updates through 1.x — and everyone who buys during the beta keeps 1.0 free. No subscription, ever: there is no recurring service to bill for, which is exactly the point.
What we will never build
- Anything that ships your notes to a model or a server — no cloud "AI suggestions", no embeddings service.
- Background update checks or silent phone-home of any kind. If a "check for updates" button ever exists, it will be manual, documented, and yours to press.
- A proprietary database your documents live inside. Files in, files out, always.
- Accounts, license servers, or activation. The app cannot dial home to refuse you.
Full honesty, one detail: after OCR-ing a scanned document, hushvault saves the recognized text in a .hushvault/text/ folder inside your vault so a re-index never re-runs minutes of OCR. It's plain JSON, and deleting it is always safe — the only cost is re-recognizing.