Most notes apps use a proprietary database. Apple Notes stores in CoreData plus CloudKit. Bear stores in SQLite. Evernote has its own format. In all those cases, your note data is abstract: it lives inside the app, is accessible only by that app, and exporting outside requires conversion. Notas BLA is different. Each note is a pure .md file, visible in Finder, inside the iCloud Drive > Notas BLA folder.
You open Finder on the Mac, go to iCloud Drive, find the Notas BLA folder, and see your files. A list of .md, ordered by date. You open one with TextEdit, edit it, save it, and Notas BLA picks up the change when reopening. You open with VS Code, with Sublime Text, with Obsidian pointing to the same folder, with any plain text editor. The files are yours, in a universal format, in a visible location.
The decision is editorial. Notas BLA does not want to lock you in. You should be able to leave the app without losing anything, without needing an export tool, without becoming hostage to a proprietary format. Whoever uses it while it makes sense. When it does not make sense anymore, takes it with them. Anti-lock-in is not just a marketing word, it is the technical structure of the product.
The decision is also technical. Instead of managing sync with a proprietary server (complex, requires a backend), Notas BLA delegates everything to Apple’s iCloud Drive. NSMetadataQuery discovers new files, FileCoordinator coordinates reading and writing, NSFileVersion allows recovering a previous version. It is infrastructure that already exists in iOS and macOS, and that works on every Apple device without needing a BLA server. No server, no maintenance cost, no single point of failure.
The most interesting consequence is the integration with AI. Since your notes are .md files in an open folder, any tool with access to local files can read them. Claude Code, running on the Mac, reads the whole folder as context. You open Claude Code in the terminal, in the iCloud Drive > Notas BLA folder, ask for a summary of the last twenty notes, and the summary comes out. You integrated AI without needing specific integration.
Another consequence is automatic backup. iCloud Drive backs up by itself. You do not need to think about backup, export schedule, redundancy. Apple takes care of it. If the iPhone breaks, your notes are in iCloud. If you buy a new Mac, you just sign in to the Apple ID and the files come down.
Another is inspection. You can look at your notes as files, without opening the app. How many files? How many bytes? Which is the largest? Which was modified last? All of that is a response to a Terminal command (ls, du, find). For whoever has a more technical profile, this is liberating. For whoever does not, it changes nothing (you keep using the app normally).
The open folder in iCloud Drive is the technical and editorial decision that most defines Notas BLA. Anti-lock-in by design. Your notes are yours. The app is the most elegant way to create and export them. But they exist outside the app, and they can leave when you decide.
