Introduction
What is General Text?
General Text is a workspace for custom apps: small, single-purpose tools shaped to how you actually work, rather than one big program everybody has to bend around. A ledger that matches your books. A tracker for the thing only your team tracks. A reading list, a maintenance log, a CRM with your pipeline in it.
Every one of them runs in your workspace, keeps its data as plain files you own, syncs live to your other devices and to the people you share the workspace with, and is end-to-end encrypted on the way. No server of its own, no account to wire up, no database to run.
Want to look around first? Try the live demo workspace: no account, nothing to install, right in your browser.
Where the apps come from
You don't have to build them. Fork one from the gallery and the copy is yours, running from your own workspace's files. Ask an AI agent for the tool you wanted and it writes it in; the whole app is a static frontend against one file API, which is small enough that this actually works. Or write one yourself in an afternoon. See Apps and, if you're building, Building Apps.
Because an app is a copy your workspace owns, it keeps working whatever happens to whoever made it: no update you didn't ask for, nothing to shut down, nothing that can be priced up under you.
And the files are the contract
Under the apps is a workspace of plain files: Markdown, CSV, JSONL, whatever you like. Anything an app writes, you can open with something else, read in a terminal, hand to an AI agent, or keep in a folder on your disk long after the app that made it is gone. That is what makes a small tool safe to depend on.
Philosophy
- Tools shaped to you. Software should fit the work, not the other way round. Small apps you can fork, change or replace beat one program that has to be everything to everyone.
- Files are the contract. Your content is plain text in open formats, never a proprietary container. You can always read, export and process it with any tool, including your own.
- Yours, and private. Synced workspaces are end-to-end encrypted: the files and even their names are encrypted on your device, and we hold no key. What an app can reach is bounded by construction, and most apps talk to no network at all.
- Real-time by default. Every edit appears on every device and for everyone in the workspace as it happens. There is no save-and-refresh, and it keeps working offline.
- Durable. An app you fork runs from your files, on your machine, for as long as you keep them. Walk away for five years and come back to your data, your history and the code that reads it.