🌿 Fernfiles

A file store that feels like Dropbox did when everyone loved it - small, fast, delightful - with a markdown-native heart and an AI-agent-friendly interface.

Fern is files and folders. Not calendars, not contacts, not chat. It stores your stuff, versions it so you can't lose it, shares it without ceremony, and gets out of the way.

Fernfiles is in early testing. Sign up and you join the waitlist — we'll email you as we let people in.

You can't lose anything

Every overwrite and delete is recoverable. Full history, a trash can, and a log of what happened to each file.

Markdown-first, not markdown-only

Notes get an editor that saves as you type and links notes to each other. Photos, PDFs, and the rest live in the same folders and stand on their own.

Find it by describing it

Search understands what your notes mean, not just which words they contain — ask a question and get the note back even when you never used those words in it. Scanned PDFs and photos of text are read on upload, so what's inside them is findable too.

Your data, your disk

Self-hostable, on plain local storage by default. Cloud is opt-in, not assumed.

Built for humans and agentsComing soon

Browser, CLI, and MCP over the same files. Your AI agents read your notes for context, cross-reference them, and file back what you learn.

Share things with people

An email address or a phone number is all it takes. No org to join, no admin to ask, no accounts and roles to manage.

Your apps' data is yours tooComing soon

Apps you authorize keep their data in your Fernfiles, not their own silo. It's still yours the day they shut down.

What works today

  • Sign in with email, text, or a passkey — no passwords
  • Browse, create, and organize files and folders
  • A markdown editor that auto-saves and renders formatting as you type
  • Upload anything; images and PDFs view inline; drag and drop
  • Videos start instantly and skip around smoothly
  • Version history and restore, a trash can, a per-file activity log
  • Simultaneous edits keep both copies — nothing is silently overwritten
  • A reading view for notes, separate from editing
  • Notes that link to each other — [[wiki links]], backlinks, and links that follow a rename
  • Share with anyone by email or phone — view or edit — or make a file public at its own URL
  • Search that finds files by meaning — including the text inside images and PDFs

What's coming

  • Viewers for photos, documents, and spreadsheets
  • Comment and react on shared files
  • REST API, CLI, and an MCP server for AI agents
  • Apps storing their data in your Fernfiles
  • Photos: albums, metadata, phone auto-upload
  • Publish a folder as a website, S3 storage

Want in?

Fernfiles is in early testing, so accounts are let in a few at a time. Sign up with your email or phone and we'll notify you when yours is approved.

Join the waitlist

Fernfiles is open source and self-hostable. See the code on GitHub.