arivo
every reader i tried held my library hostage. cloud accounts that own your annotations, databases you cant open, export as a feature not a right. arivo is my answer: a local-first reading environment where the library is just folders on my disk and every highlight and note i make stays mine.
import, read, highlight, note, bookmark, search, export. the reading life compounds because nothing resets: progress restores on open, the notebook remembers everything, and the annotations live as human-readable json beside the book itself. zip the folder, hand it to any future app, everything reconstructs.
what it is
a real desktop app, installed and used daily
local-first: books and annotations as files on disk, sqlite only as a rebuildable index
epub and pdf reading, paginated or scrolled, three themes
highlights in five colors, notes, bookmarks, one notebook
full-text search across titles, authors, highlights and notes
what it is not
a cloud service. no account, no server holding your library
a subscription. data is a right, not a feature
a web toy. electron, sqlite and files, with a windows installer
a vault. the folders travel and the app is just a lens over them
why it exists
i read a lot and every tool i used treated my reading as their data. highlights stuck inside a proprietary app, notes that die with the account, libraries that cant leave. the moment i wanted to move anything the answer was always an export button that exports half of it.
so i built the thing i wanted to exist. the book folder is the unit: the epub or pdf, the cover, the metadata, the annotations. human-readable, portable, portable forever. delete the sqlite index and arivo rebuilds it from the folders with zero loss.
what it does
the receipts
its the app i open the longest every single day, which is the only receipt that matters. the rest is the paper trail: strict types, real tests, a headless smoke boot on every change, and a release loop where the app updates itself.