Collection
Life Archive Format
The Life Archive Format v0.1 specification, with practical examples for every part of an archive.
This collection documents the Life Archive Format as implemented by the reference Life Archive app. Start with the overview, then use the focused entries as a reference while creating or validating an archive.
Entries
Life Archive Format Overview
The Life Archive Format (LAF) is an open, portable, file-based format for personal archives. A life archive is an ordinary folder containing JSON, Markdown, and media files. It…
Read entryArchive Root, life.json, and README.md
Every life archive begins with a root directory. The root holds the manifest, the archive introduction, and the standard content folders. life.json life.json is the archive mani…
Read entryEntries in Life Archive Format
Entries are the primary written records in a life archive. An entry can represent a story, journal note, recipe, essay, document description, event, article, or any other item w…
Read entryCollections in Life Archive Format
Collections create curated groups inside an archive. They are useful for topics, projects, family branches, recipe categories, travel journals, exhibitions, reading paths, and a…
Read entryPeople and Places in Life Archive Format
People and places give stories a stable context. Instead of repeating a person's biography or a place description in every entry, an archive can create one entity and refer to i…
Read entryAlbums in Life Archive Format
Albums preserve groups of photographs with as little metadata overhead as possible. In life/0.1 , an album is a directory under albums/ ; it does not require a Markdown file or…
Read entryFiles, Media, and Archive Links
The files/ directory stores assets that are not organized as photo albums. It can contain images, audio, video, PDFs, scans, text documents, and other files that belong with the…
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