The idea
Most software asks you to trust that the company will still be there — still running the servers, still supporting the app — for as long as you care about what you made in it. For a photo filter, fine. For a child’s library with a grandparent’s voice in it, that’s not a reasonable thing to ask a family to bet on.
So we invert it. Every One Third Ceiling app is built on a file format that is open, documented, and boring on purpose: human-readable JSON plus universal media formats with archival lifespans. The format comes first; the app earns its place by being the best way to author and enjoy that format — never by being the only way.
What that means in practice
- A library exported from our book app is a folder of plain files a grown child can open in twenty years, on any platform, with no app at all if it comes to that.
- A list format simple enough that any AI assistant can write one from a chat window — which quietly turns every AI subscription into an authoring tool for our apps, no partnership required.
- No proprietary lock-in, no data held hostage, nothing that stops working when a server goes dark.
Format documentation
Format specifications ship with the apps themselves, and public documentation pages will live here as each app launches.