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localfirst

(50 articles)

Queue-Driven Archive Persistence in Continuum

Continuum’s archive system has now shifted from a simple “export current DB state” model to a queue-driven archival pipeline that preserves full event history over time. Events are queued as immutable raw snapshots, committed into Git-backed archive repositories, and later used to rebuild a global archive index independently from the live SQLite database. This architecture now supports durable version preservation, retry-safe archival processing, and long-term reconstruction of archive state entirely from committed history.

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Sovereignty Requires Better Failure Modes

Today’s Continuum work reinforced an important idea: sovereign systems are not defined only by their capabilities, but by how they behave when dependencies are missing, environments change, or systems partially fail.

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PDF Export Consistency Matters More Than It Sounds

Today Continuum reached an important usability milestone: PDF exports now work consistently across all supported build types instead of depending entirely on one rendering engine. This sounds small on the surface, but it represents something much larger about portability, durability, and local-first software design.

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Continuum v1.6.7.7 — Toward a Fully Encrypted Sovereign Workspace

Today's work pushed Continuum further toward becoming a true sovereign local-first workspace. The focus was not on “cloud sync” or engagement mechanics. It was on reducing plaintext exposure, improving encrypted workspace handling, and making the local environment more durable and portable across different deployment models. Another important milestone: PDF exports are now supported consistently across all build types, including environments where WeasyPrint is unavailable.

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Weekly Recap: Sunday, May 10 – Saturday, May 16, 2026

This week focused on turning Continuum into a more complete sovereign workspace rather than just a local Nostr publishing application. Major work included building the first fully functional encrypted vault system, expanding multi-protocol signing identity support (PGP, SSH, Bitcoin, and Nostr), refining browser-side verification tools, and implementing a working passwordless authentication flow using signed Nostr challenges. The week also included continued refinement of offline-first workflows, local signing semantics, and identity management UX.

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Continuum Is Quietly Becoming Something Larger

The addition of Vault v1 reveals a broader pattern inside Continuum’s architecture: the platform is evolving beyond publishing into a unified local-first authority workspace. This article explores how identities, encrypted storage, signing systems, archives, and proofs all converge around the deeper concept of user-controlled authority rather than cloud-managed convenience.

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Why Local-First Software May Matter More in the AI Era

As AI dramatically lowers the cost of generating content, code, and digital artifacts, the value of trust, authorship, provenance, and local ownership increases. This article explores why local-first systems like Continuum may become more important — not less — in a world dominated by automation and centralized AI infrastructure.

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Continuum Vault - v1 - Monday, May 11, 2026

Vault v1 became fully operational inside Continuum in under 8 hours. The new system introduces encrypted local vault storage integrated directly into the Continuum workspace, including lock/unlock workflows, CRUD editing, backup support, and master-password-based encryption. More importantly, the milestone reinforces Continuum’s evolution from a publishing platform into a broader local-first authority workspace managing identities, signing systems, encrypted artifacts, and sensitive data under user control.

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Portable Cryptographic Authorship and Multi-Proof Artifact Bundles

Continuum now supports complete end-to-end signed artifact bundles containing Nostr, PGP, Bitcoin, and SSH proofs alongside manifests and signer metadata. The verifier flow locally recomputes the artifact hash and validates every attached proof against the same artifact, allowing independently verifiable multi-proof attestations without relying on relays, cloud services, or centralized platforms. The article explores how portable cryptographic artifact bundles, multi-party attestations, and composite signing authorities could fundamentally change digital authorship and verification.

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Beyond Events: Using Nostr Keys as General Signing Identities

After adding support for PGP and Bitcoin signing identities inside Continuum, a larger realization emerged: Nostr private keys are not limited to signing relay events. They can function as generalized Schnorr signing authorities capable of attesting to external artifacts, authentication challenges, and far more.

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Portable Artifact Attestations with PGP, Bitcoin, and ... Nostr?

What started as a simple PGP import feature inside Continuum unexpectedly evolved into a full local-first artifact attestation system supporting PGP, Bitcoin, and Nostr signing identities. This article explores detached signatures, portable proof bundles, and the realization that Nostr private keys can sign far more than relay events.

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Week of April 19–25 — Quiet Progress That Actually Matters

This week wasn’t about big new features. It was about clarity — tightening the message, improving the sites, and getting back into a real writing rhythm. Not flashy, but necessary.

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Write Once… Render Everywhere?

Nostr promises “write once, publish everywhere.” And at the protocol level, that’s mostly true. But in practice, how your content *renders* depends heavily on the client. Primal favors Markdown images but ignores HTML. Coracle supports HTML but doesn’t fully render Markdown image syntax. The result: the same post can look completely different depending on where it’s viewed. Continuum takes a different approach—supporting both formats and separating authorship from rendering.

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Who Owns Your Identity?

California’s digital ID in Apple Wallet is sleek, fast, and convenient—but it reveals a deeper shift: identity is moving from something you *possess* to something a system must *verify*. This article contrasts that model with a self-sovereign approach—where you control your identity and present verifiable proofs when needed. The difference isn’t just technical. It’s foundational.

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Local-First Isn’t the Hard Part

I built Continuum with ownership and control at the center. Over time, I’ve realized that the real challenge isn’t the local-first model itself—it’s designing something that is just as simple and intuitive as the alternatives without giving up those principles.

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Why Open Source Still Matters

Summary: Open source is fundamentally about visibility—the ability to inspect, run, and verify how a system works. In an increasingly opaque software landscape, that transparency matters more than ever. Continuum aligns with these principles, but openness must be introduced at the right time, when the system is coherent and understandable. The goal is not just to expose code, but to make the system truly knowable and trustworthy.

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A Place for the Work to Live

Summary: Adding a Books section to mycontinuum.xyz is a small structural change, but an important one. It creates a place for the ideas behind Continuum—sovereignty, authorship, and ownership—to live alongside the software itself. Code shows what is possible. Writing explains why it matters. Both are necessary, and bringing them together marks a shift from a project to a growing body of work.

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Write Anywhere. Publish Anywhere.

On April 19, 2026, I ran a simple but revealing experiment: create and sign a note offline on one machine, move it physically, and publish it from another. No cloud. No sync service. No account login. What happened wasn’t just a workflow—it was proof of a different model for authorship.

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Who Continuum Is For

Continuum is for people and organizations who need durable authorship, self-custodied identity, and a local-first publishing workflow. It is especially well suited for writers, journalists, researchers, human rights activists, ministries, and developers who want to create, preserve, and publish work without depending entirely on centralized platforms.

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Local Files vs Local-First: Why Continuum Exists

At first glance, Continuum may appear unnecessary to people who already write documents locally on their computers. After all, anyone can open Word, Markdown, or a text editor and save files in a folder. But Continuum is not merely a place to store documents. It is a local-first authorship and publishing system built around identity, verifiable authorship, durable archives, and intentional distribution. This article explains why the difference matters.

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Why I Certified the Mac App

A reflection on why signing and notarizing the native Mac application was a critical milestone for Continuum. This piece explores friction, trust, user onboarding, and why local-first software must feel as smooth and trustworthy as cloud-native products.

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“Nostr Clients Are Enough”

Nostr clients are powerful — especially for discovery and interaction. But they are not designed for ownership, authoring, or long-term control. This article explores why clients are essential, but not sufficient, and what changes when you separate discovery from creation.

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Writing Isn’t Publishing

Most modern systems collapse writing and publishing into a single action. This creates hidden pressure and limits how ideas develop. This article explores why separating authoring from distribution matters — and how local-first systems restore a healthier way to think, write, and share.

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You Shouldn’t Need the Internet to Think

Most modern tools assume constant connectivity. If the network is down, the system stops working. This article explores how that assumption quietly reshapes how we create, think, and work — and why local-first systems restore something deeper than just offline access.

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You Don’t Own Your Account

Most people believe they “own” their accounts, data, and identity online. In reality, they have access — not ownership. This article explores how small, everyday failures (like password resets and lockouts) reveal a deeper architectural problem, and why local-first systems change that foundation.

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Sabbath Is Not a Break. It’s Alignment.

Sabbath is not a recovery mechanism for exhaustion—it is a return to alignment with God as the true source. This article explores how rest reframes work, exposes hidden dependencies, and reshapes the way we build, write, and live.

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You Cannot Build What You Refuse to Leave

Sabbath reveals whether we are building in trust or in control. This article explores how our attachment to work exposes hidden dependencies, and why true durability requires the ability to step away.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap. 9 - Separation of Authoring and Distribution

Most systems tightly couple the act of creating content with the act of publishing it. This creates dependency on networks, platforms, and infrastructure at the moment of creation. Local-first systems must separate these concerns. This chapter defines the distinction between authoring and distribution and explains how decoupling them enables durability, flexibility, and true sovereignty.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap. 8 - Identity as a First-Class Primitive

Most systems treat identity as an afterthought — something layered on top of functionality through accounts and authentication. Local-first systems cannot. Identity must be foundational, shaping how data is created, signed, verified, and distributed. This chapter defines identity as a first-class primitive and outlines the design implications of building systems around it.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap 7 - Determinism Over Dynamism

Local-first systems prioritize determinism — predictable, reproducible behavior — over dynamic, server-driven state. This chapter explains why determinism is essential for trust, recoverability, and durability, and how it shapes system design choices around state, execution, and synchronization.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap 5 - Why SaaS Became the Default

Software-as-a-Service did not become dominant because it was inherently better for users. It became the default because it aligned with the economic incentives of companies and the operational realities of the web. This chapter explores the forces that led to SaaS dominance and why those forces continue to shape modern software architecture.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap 4 - Data Ownership vs Data Access

Ownership is often confused with visibility. Many systems allow users to see and interact with their data, but stop short of granting true control over it. This chapter clarifies the distinction between owning data and merely accessing it, and explains why local-first systems must prioritize ownership at the structural level.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap 3 Authority vs Access

Modern software gives users access to data without granting authority over it. This distinction is subtle but foundational. This chapter explores how systems can feel usable and even empowering while still being controlled elsewhere — and why true local-first design requires shifting from access-based models to authority-based systems.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap 2 - The Illusion of 'Offline Support'

Many applications claim to support offline usage, but what they actually provide is temporary caching layered on top of a fundamentally network-dependent system. This chapter examines why most “offline modes” fail under real-world conditions and clarifies the difference between cache-based resilience and true local-first architecture.

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🔒 Book 2 - Building Local-First Systems - Chap 1 - What Is Local-First, Really?

Local-first is often reduced to “apps that work offline.” That definition is incomplete. Local-first is about authority — where the system of record lives, who controls it, and what persists when the network disappears. This chapter reframes local-first as a shift from access-based systems to authority-based systems.

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Building a Local Publishing Scheduler

Implementing scheduled publishing in Continuum required coordinating identity management, database state, and relay publishing logic across several parts of the system.

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Offline-First Scheduling for Nostr Publishing

Continuum’s scheduler is designed to work reliably even when internet connectivity is intermittent, reinforcing the importance of offline-first design for local publishing tools.

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Scheduled Publishing Without Key Custody

Continuum introduces scheduled publishing for Nostr events while preserving local control of signing keys, demonstrating a new model for sovereign publishing infrastructure.

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Building With Keys: A Practical Roadmap for Sovereign Systems

A practical guide for founders, consultants, and technologists who want to implement cryptographic identity into real-world systems without rebuilding everything from scratch.

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🔒 Buidling Continuum - Chap. 26 - Rules That Do Not Bend

Growth is welcome. But growth that fractures trust boundaries is corrosion. In this chapter, I confront the real temptation behind slow adoption—the shortcut of central hosting—and explain why Continuum rests on seven rules that do not bend. These rules are not aesthetic preferences; they are structural constraints designed to prevent leverage, inconsistency, and quiet self-betrayal. Ease is welcome. Dilution is not.

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🔒 Building Continuum - Chapter 27 — If It Scales Unexpectedly

Obscurity tests conviction. Growth tests clarity. In this chapter, I explore what would happen if Continuum scaled faster than expected. The real danger would not be failure. It would be drift—convenience pressure, feature accumulation, and the quiet erosion of simplicity. If Continuum grows, it must remain understandable, constrained, and structurally coherent.

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🔒 Building Continuum - Chapter 28 — The Road Ahead

Continuum is not finished. Some elements remain incomplete—relay management per identity, targeted publishing, offline signing, mirrored dashboards, large encrypted attachments, and a sovereign marketplace layer. But incompleteness is not incoherence. This chapter reflects on what Continuum might become, what happens if it fails, and how building it fundamentally transformed the builder. The system may evolve. The shift does not reverse. Freedom is worth building for.

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🔒 Building Continuum — Chapter 9 — The Friction with Existing Clients

Existing Nostr clients worked. They were functional, even elegant. But friction exposed deeper architectural misalignment. This chapter explores why “good enough” was not enough — and how dissatisfaction became structural insight.

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🔒 Building Continuum — Chapter 7 — Durability Over Virality

Modern platforms optimize for engagement and amplification. Continuum rejects that metric. This chapter explores why durability — not reach — became the guiding principle, and why obscurity can be healthier than applause.

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🔒 Building Continuum — Chapter 6 — The Patron Model

Continuum does not require massive infrastructure, venture capital, or cloud burn rates. Its real cost is time, focus, and conviction. This chapter explores why the patron model exists — not to fund servers, but to protect architectural independence and preserve alignment.

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🔒 Building Continuum — Chap. 5 — The Irony of Local-First

Local-first software is often framed as regressive or anti-progress. Yet personal computing began as fully local, possession-based, and independent of centralized authentication. This chapter explores the tension between innovation and remembering — and why returning to local-first architecture is not nostalgia, but structural correction.

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🔒 Building Continuum — Chap. 4 — Architecture as Theology

This chapter explores the tension between convenience and stewardship. Software architecture encodes values — about authority, dependency, and responsibility. “Architecture as Theology” argues that local-first design is not nostalgia or paranoia, but a moral stance about custody, leverage, and the distribution of power in an age of centralized cloud systems and AI.

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🔒 Building Continuum — Chap. 3 — Building in Silence

This chapter explores the tension between conviction and validation. What happens when you build daily, publish relentlessly, and receive little response? “Building in Silence” examines the psychological cost of creating without applause — and why silence clarified rather than ended the work.

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🔒 Building Continuum - Chap 2 - Keys Not Accounts

This chapter explores the structural difference between accounts and keys — and why that distinction reshaped my thinking. Decentralization at the protocol layer does not automatically produce sovereignty at the user layer. “Keys, Not Accounts” explains why identity must be possession-based rather than permission-based, and how that realization became a foundational boundary for Continuum’s architecture.

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🔒 Building Continuum - Chap. 1 - Why I started

This chapter explains why Continuum began — not as a startup idea, but as a quiet response to friction. What began as a few signed notes on Nostr evolved into a deeper realization about authorship, ownership, dependency, and local-first infrastructure. “Why I Started” is not about ambition; it is about coherence.

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