June 14, 2026
The tomatoes came back. So did I.
yourname.com/2026/06/14/the-tomatoes-came-back
Posted from Elsewhere · also on Bluesky · Mastodon · Instagram
Everything you've posted, home at last.
Right now it all lives in somebody else's building. Elsewhere brings it home: one private archive on your own computer, with a feed of your whole life that no algorithm ranks or hides. When you're ready, it goes live at your own address and stays there.
Free. Open source when the first desktop release ships. Nothing leaves your computer unless you tell it to.
A sample of what comes home
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June 2026 · Posted from Elsewhere
The tomatoes came back. So did I.
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July 2019 · From Instagram
Sunday in the garden. Café au lait after.
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August 2015 · From Instagram
Lake weekend with the grandkids.
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March 2011 · From Twitter
On learning to make my mother's bread, a thread…
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January 2009 · From Twitter
First frost. The garden sleeps, I plan.
One place you own. Copies go everywhere else.
Here's the whole idea in one sentence: the important parts of your life should belong to you, and technology should make that stronger instead of weaker. Everything below follows from that.
Seventeen years of your life, and none of it is yours
Think about what's out there with your name on it. The photos of your kids growing up, posted where the grandparents could see them. The newsletter. The recipes. The eulogy you read out loud and then shared because people kept asking for a copy. Years of your life, kept in buildings you rent by logging in.
Every one of those buildings can suspend the account, change the rules, or shut down. Several already have. When they go, they take your years with them.
None of this means quitting anything. The platforms are good at the one thing they're actually for, which is reaching people. The mistake was ever treating them as the place your life is kept.
What felt like a home turns out to be a login.
You made all of it. It's time you owned any of it.
Bring your past home, all of it
The platforms already let you download your history as a file. Elsewhere shows you the two lines of instructions for each one, then reads back whatever they send: photos, captions, dates, threads, even the strange encoding bugs baked into their exports.
The importer has one rule, and it's written into the code. Leave nothing.
Example import
- Instagram310 posts
- Twitter / X150 threads
- Substack23 letters
- LinkedInimported
Real numbers from my own archive.
Reread your own life
The feed is one calm timeline. Newest first, oldest still reachable, nothing promoted, nothing hidden. On this day brings back what you wrote years ago, so the archive doubles as a daily reader.
The journal reads by year, month, and day. Days you wrote are marked on the month's plate, and consecutive days fuse into one unbroken line of ink. There are no streak counts and no badges. Just the line.
Writing is a page and a button that says Save to journal. Entries stay private until you share them. Open anywhere brings back a random entry you'd forgotten.
The journal
June 2026
MTWTFSS
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930
The line is unbroken since Saturday.
This day, other years.
- 2019Sunday in the garden. Café au lait after.
- 2015Lake weekend with the grandkids.
- 2009First frost. The garden sleeps, I plan.
Open anywhere · a random entry from any year
Keep a vault on your own computer
Everything lives in a vault folder on your own machine, with an encrypted copy kept current in a cloud account you already have: iCloud Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. The cloud company only ever holds scrambled bytes. The key that unscrambles them stays with you.
There is no Elsewhere server and no Elsewhere account. You keep the original the way you'd keep a box of letters in a closet, except this box backs itself up.
Where your life lives
- This computerthe vault
- Your cloud accountan encrypted copy
- Anyone elsenothing
Publish at your own address, and keep it
When you decide to go public, Elsewhere turns your posts into a fast website at your own domain. Your permalinks never change. You post from Elsewhere and the site updates itself, while the vault behind it stays private.
The name is the point: you post on your own site and you syndicate elsewhere. Direct sends go to Bluesky and Mastodon. For X, Threads, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Micro.blog, Elsewhere opens their composer and records the permalink you paste back. Every entry remembers where it lives, with a link to each copy.
At yourname.com
- Hostingpaid once, to Amber, under written terms
- Permalinkskept at the same addresses
- Your private vaultstays on your computer
Letters, and the people you chose
Elsewhere is a reader too. Follow your family, your friends, anyone with a feed on the open web, and see them in the order they posted. No suggestions, no ads, no bait, no counts.
Letters are a newsletter with no platform in the middle. Write once, and each person gets the version meant for them. It goes out as plain email that looks like it came from a person, because it did. Your subscriber list stays in your vault and exports any day you like.
Following
- Maria's garden notes2h ago
- Dad's fishing logyesterday
- Suggested for younever
One letter: three versions
- To Momthe full letter plus the family photos
- To subscribersthe essay
- To the busy onesthe short version
"Yours" is something you can check.
Every product on earth says your data is yours. Almost none of them mean it in a way you could verify. Elsewhere is built so the claim survives a look.
Ownership here lives in the architecture.
- The vault is a folder on your disk.Open Finder: find it, copy it to a thumb drive. It works.
- The backups are ciphertext.Open your cloud folder and look: scrambled blobs, readable only by your key.
- The public site is plain HTML.Take the folder to any host on earth and your permalinks come with you.
- It speaks open standards.JSON Feed, OPML, microformats. Formats that existed before Elsewhere and will outlast it.
- No telemetry.The app phones no one, and the code goes public with the first desktop release.
- Leaving is easy on purpose.Everything exports: because everything already sits on your own machine.
From nothing to home in an afternoon
Owning your own stuff used to mean running a server, which is exactly why almost nobody sane did it. Elsewhere swallowed that part. If you can attach a file to an email, you can do every step here, and you can skip any of them.
- Say who you are.About one minute
Your name and a line about yourself. That's the whole form. There's no account to make, because there's no company to make it with.
- Ask the platforms for your history.Two clicks each: then a wait
Elsewhere points you to exactly where each "download your data" button is hiding. The files usually show up within a day or two.
- Drop the files in.A few minutes: even with years of photos
Watch your life come back: photos, dates intact, your oldest posts landing right where they belong.
- Pick a backup folder.One tap
Choose the cloud account you're already paying for. From then on Elsewhere keeps an encrypted copy there, and you're the only one holding the key.
- Go public: if you ever want to.Optional: one payment
Connect Amber in your browser, see the price for your actual site, pay once, and your feed lives at your own address.
A site for your dad should not disappear because a credit card expired.
Elsewhere is where you publish. Amber is the reason it's still there in ten years. Pay once and your site stays online, with the terms written down the day you buy, and part of what you pay set aside for the day Amber itself might wind down. If that day ever comes, your site gets exported, archived out in the open, and its links kept alive.
You pay Amber directly and you own the domain yourself. Elsewhere never touches the money and can republish your archive anywhere, any time.
The honest status
Amber hasn't launched publicly yet. When it does, a personal site will typically cost around $50, once, plus the yearly registration on your domain. Neither payment goes to Elsewhere.
Soon, and out in the open.
Where this stands
- The archive it runsmy own: 3,920 entries, 2005 to 2026, every day
- The Mac appreal, in private testing. No public download yet
- The codegoes public with the first desktop release
- The milestonea one-click desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux
The recipe is free. Take it.
I want to hand you the whole recipe, the prompts and the code, so you can stand up your own version just for yourself and never owe me a cent. The do-it-yourself guides will live in the Pantry, our free library of recipes for building and running these systems yourself.
Some people want the recipe. Some people want dinner. Both should get to eat.
Questions that matter
Something I didn't cover? Email me: zach@thekitchen.co.It's really me on the other end.
What does Elsewhere cost?
The whole app is free, and the code goes public with the first desktop release.
If you publish through Amber, you pay Amber a one-time hosting fee. A personal site typically costs around $50, with the exact price shown before you pay. You also pay the yearly registration fee for your domain. Neither payment goes to Elsewhere.
You can host the public site yourself with the free recipe. In that case, Elsewhere charges nothing.
Why is it free?
I built Elsewhere because I wanted my own life back from the platforms. A tool for owning your data only makes sense if ownership itself is free.
Amber pays for its work through the one-time hosting fee. Elsewhere never receives that money and does not need access to your vault. There is no business hiding inside your private archive.
Do I have to quit Instagram, TikTok, or the other platforms?
No. Keep using them when they help you reach people.
Elsewhere changes which copy is the original. You publish from your own address and your own vault. The platforms receive copies for distribution. You get their reach without asking them to preserve your life.
Is this for "creators"?
It is for people with lives.
A decade of family photos on Instagram belongs here. So does a folder of unfinished essays, a fishing log, old newsletters, recipes, and the occasional paragraph you wrote at one in the morning because it would not leave you alone.
Elsewhere has no analytics, growth charts, or posting streaks. It keeps what you make.
I am not technical. How hard is this?
Setup takes five short screens. Every one has a Skip button.
The hardest part is usually finding the "download your data" button inside a platform's settings. Elsewhere gives you the directions. There is no terminal, server setup, or configuration file. You should not have to become a nerd to own your own work.
What happens to the originals?
Elsewhere keeps the material exactly as the platforms hand it over: photos at the quality they export, complete captions, original timestamps, and the original data files.
The vault holds enough to rebuild each imported post without asking the platform again.
What happens if my computer dies?
Install Elsewhere on a new computer, point it to the cloud backup folder, and enter your key. Your archive, settings, and site come back from the encrypted copy.
What happens if the Elsewhere project disappears?
Your archive remains on your disk in an inspectable format. Your published site remains plain HTML on hosting you purchased directly. Your feeds use standards supported by other applications.
Elsewhere is built so your work can survive without Elsewhere.
Is this social media?
It keeps the part that mattered: you publish, people who chose to follow you can read it, and you see people you chose in the order they posted.
There is no machine choosing the feed, selling your attention, or turning your relationships into public scores.
When can I use it?
Elsewhere is in development. It already runs my own archive every day, back to 2005.
The current milestone is a one-click desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux. The honest release date is soon. You can follow along on my blog, and the full source code goes public with the first desktop release.