Top all-time · #1064
Steph Ango
Personal blog · stephango.com · on HN as kepanoproductivitywriting
Steph Ango's personal blog at stephango.com covers productivity and writing. Since 2023, 66 different Hacker News readers have linked it 121 times, most often “File over app”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-10-20, and you can follow it by feed.
Ideas, essays, and projects by Steph Ango.
Most-linked posts?
- File over app25 people · 31 mentions · first linked 2023-11-08
- Flexoki Color Scheme7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2023-10-07
- What Can We Remove?6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-06-28
- 100% User-Supported5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-02-11
- Self-Guaranteeing Promises5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-12-03
- How Steph Ango Uses Obsidian4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-07-22
- Use the Saw, Fear the Saw4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-10-25
- Choose Optimism4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-12-30
- Don't Delegate Understanding4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-02-04
- Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-27
What Hacker News says?
Looks great! Postman dug its own grave after selling out itself for VC money. The “File over app” philosophy is a direction that we should be supporting after the Post-ZIRP VC money world. 1: https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Bruno: Fast and Git-friendly open-source API client (Postman alternative)”Submitted If you're remote, ramble as a story · 976 points
HN discussionObsidian's philosophy is file over app [1] and releasing a spec for their Canvas feature is fulfilling that promise. It's a strictly positive 'today is better than yesterday' thing for them to have done so. You shouldn't need to ask permission or consult anyone to do this. That's a silly bar, 'egregious' even. When markdown was created, Gruber wasn't asking all his friends making text editors whether they'd support…
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “JSON Canvas – An open file format for infinite canvas data”Submitted 100% User-Supported as a story · 191 points
HN discussionThat's exactly my point. "File over app"[1] is just as relevant for businesses as it is for individuals — if you don't want your data to be used for training, then take sovereignty of it. [1] https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Slack AI Training with Customer Data”Submitted Self-Guaranteeing Promises as a story · 63 points
HN discussionThis is nice. Recently discovered something similar: Flexoki - https://stephango.com/flexoki
Comment linking /flexoki
on “Uchū – Color palette for internet lovers”Submitted Photoshop for Text (2022) as a story · 57 points
HN discussionI appreciate the nod to "File over app"[1] in the announcement. It's so cool that a Markdown file with code blocks can be the source for complex data visualizations and dashboards. Interoperability of this kind makes me giddy. I played around with editing an Observable site from Obsidian and it works great[2]. [1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app [2]: https://twitter.com/kepano/status/1758202572446581025
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Observable 2.0, a static site generator for data apps”Submitted File over app as a story · 42 points
HN discussion(CEO of Obsidian here) Yes, on desktop, Obsidian plugins can access files on your system, unless you run it in a container. On iOS, iPadOS, and Android the app is sandboxed so plugins are more constrained. This is not unique to Obsidian. VS Code (and Cursor) work the same way despite Microsoft being a multi-trillion dollar company. This is why Obsidian ships in restricted mode and there's a full-screen warning befor…
Comment linking /vcware
on “Less is safer: Reducing the risk of supply chain attacks”Submitted Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash as a story · 36 points
HN discussionOne of Obsidian's creators is saying exactly the same actually. https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Ditching Obsidian and building my own”Submitted Don't Delegate Understanding as a story · 27 points
HN discussionFor the future, we're looking at web-based version with real-time collaboration. But for now, we decided to start with desktop. We were also influenced by the "file over app" philosophy of Obsidian's founder: https://stephango.com/file-over-app .
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps”Submitted Use the Saw, Fear the Saw as a story · 20 points
HN discussionI agree with your core sentiment but unfortunately we don't have a mass-producible display technology that allows for black pixels in a see-through optic (yet). It's going to be really hard to achieve. Pass-through is the only AR approach that currently allows black pixels, but it has uncomfortable limitations compared to a see-through optic. https://stephango.com/black-pixels
Comment linking /black-pixels
on “Apple's Liquid Glass is prep work for AR interfaces, not just a design refresh”Submitted Choose Optimism as a story · 7 points
HN discussionRegarding chat history, I've been thinking that people should have ownership over chat history. We are migrating the chats towards SQLite, so your data is going to be a timeless format like files* - SQLite has long term support through year 2050. https://www.sqlite.org/lts.html * See [File over app]( https://stephango.com/file-over-app ).
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Claude for Desktop”Submitted Ramblings as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI'm not an Obsidian user, but I agree with their "file over app" philosophy.[1] If SiYuan stops being developed, are the files still readable/parse-able? [1]: https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Siyuan: Privacy-first, self-hosted personal knowledge management software”Submitted Flexoki Color Scheme as a story · 5 points
HN discussionBeen in a similar philosophy for a while now. I like the idea of staying native to the OS, using open formats as much as possible, and using interoperable toolings. The idea is to approach content as data-first, with tools on top, and be at ease with plans to Walk-Out when needed. Besides the article in discussion, here are a few inspirations for plain-text as the defaults. - The writing of our very own Obsidian’s C…
Comment linking /
on “My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)”Submitted File over App (2023) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionBtw, I also like the CEO's[1] writing and philosophy. I think he is also active here on Hacker News. One such is “File over app”[2] which I have sent to quite a few friends, kids, to read and think over it. 1. https://stephango.com/about 2. https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “Why I Like Obsidian”Submitted Choose Optimism as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe repercussions of what the author summarizes as "could you colour-grade a book?" still feel wildly unknown to me, even after a couple years of thinking about it (see Photoshop for text [1][2]). Partially it's because we're still wrapping our heads around what kind of experience this might enable. The tools still feel ahead of the medium. I think we're closer to Niépce than Muybridge. In photography terms, we've j…
Comment linking /photoshop-for-text
on “Here comes the Muybridge camera moment but for text”Submitted What Can We Remove? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionRelated idea to local-first: https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Comment linking /file-over-app
on “I wrote a static web page and accidentally started a community (2023)”Submitted 40 Questions to ask yourself every year as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
