What's inside

Your vault is a folder. Open it in Finder and you'll see three things.

The files

• notes/ holds every capture as a Markdown file, one per note. Plain text, named by timestamp, safe to open in any editor.
• atoms.db holds the front/back pairs, your review history, and FSRS scheduling state. It's a SQLite database, encrypted at rest.
• settings.json holds your preferences (shortcut bindings, theme, quiet hours). Plain JSON you could edit by hand, though it's easier to change them in the app.

That's it. No hidden subfolders, no metadata stores, no caches that grow forever.

Why it's flat

The vault is deliberately simple. If Atomus disappeared tomorrow, you could:

• Open every note in TextEdit, VS Code, or Obsidian
• Copy the whole folder to a new Mac and have your memory intact
• Read atoms.db with any SQLite browser (once decrypted)
• Sync the folder through any filesystem tool

Nothing depends on Atomus being around. That's the whole point of local-first.

Peeking inside a note

Every note is a Markdown file that looks like this:

---
created: 2026-04-21T09:00Z
atoms: 1
---

What did Ebbinghaus prove in 1885? == That memory decays exponentially
in the first 24 hours after learning.

The frontmatter is maintained by Atomus. The body is exactly what you wrote. ==, {{cloze}}, multiple choice, lists, and @YYYY-MM-DD deadlines all live in the Markdown as-is. Edit it in any editor if you want. Atomus reconciles the atoms the next time it sees the file.