Files are over. All you need are URLs | The Vergecast
What this video is
⚡ a 37-minute video, readable in 60 secondsThis segment centers on a conversation between an unnamed host and guest Paul Ford, co-founder of Aboard, about his side project Tiny Little Office (tinylittleoffice.com), a web-based office suite that encodes entire documents, spreadsheets, and decks directly into a URL instead of storing them on a server. The discussion revolves around what this design means for privacy, data ownership, and 'where the computer is,' with Ford walking through the tool's technical mechanics, its light-privacy use cases for apps like Signal and Blue Sky, and his decision to keep it open source, on GitHub, and unmonetized. Ford also argues that browsers have matured enough to rival native apps, while noting that app stores still dominate because of the money Google and Apple make from the current system. The piece opens with a separate tech news segment (an iPhone hinge defect, Anthropic's SEC filing, a new iPad mini) before the Ford interview, and later includes an unrelated documentary discussion and a Jira sponsor message.
[02:55] Paul Ford, co-founder of a company called Aboard, joined as a guest to discuss AI software and where 'the computer' is.
Key takeaways
- [03:07] Paul Ford built tinylittleoffice.com, a site where an entire document, deck, or spreadsheet is stored encoded directly in the URL rather than on a server.
- [04:31] Paul Ford said the original idea for the project came from his business partner Rich Ziotti about six years earlier.
- [05:07] Paul Ford said Rich Ziotti's original idea was a small spreadsheet called Tiny Sheet with 10 rows and two or three columns that did a little math.
- [05:22] Paul Ford said Tiny Sheet, hosted at tinysheet.com, never saved data to a server and instead encoded what you typed into the URL so it could be pasted into Slack to share.
+ 23 more takeaways
- [06:04] Paul Ford said he eventually expanded the idea into Tiny Little Office, a full suite with a word processor, spreadsheet, outliner, and presentation software, all still encodable into a URL.
- [07:54] Paul Ford said the document format is a heavily compressed version of Markdown with extra features, and the approach is fully public and documented.
- [08:21] Paul Ford said because QR codes can hold a couple thousand characters, he can generate a QR code that encodes an entire document rather than just a link.
- [08:58] Paul Ford said hundreds of thousands of people have looked at Tiny Little Office, calling it a moment of 'doing good on product time.'
- [09:40] Paul Ford explained that in browser URLs, everything after the pound sign is not stored on a server, only in the browser, as the underlying mechanism for the tool's privacy claim.
- [11:08] Paul Ford described a use case of opening a Tiny Little Office link in incognito mode and sharing the URL over an encrypted channel like Signal so the data never touches a server.
- [11:45] Paul Ford noted the project is open source but acknowledged that, if he were nefarious, he could still write JavaScript code to send that browser data to another server.
- [13:52] Paul Ford said hundreds of thousands of people are using the tool and he has no idea what they are building unless they post it on Blue Sky, though he can see usage across many countries.
- [15:13] Paul Ford said this format removes the concept of ownership, because once the URL is in someone else's hands, you can't own the document anymore, stated without further evidence given.
- [17:39] Paul Ford said this kind of software historically hasn't existed because the gap between how hard it is to build and its revenue potential has always been too large, stated without evidence given.
- [18:19] Paul Ford said he spent 10 days building it, mostly on train rides home, totaling maybe 20 to 30 hours.
- [19:41] Paul Ford said that when he asked about safety, the AI told him real safety required AES-256 post-quantum encryption, and he had it implement that.
- [20:32] Paul Ford invited scrutiny of the code, noting it's just one JavaScript file, and said he would welcome anyone who found a bug in it.
- [21:24] Paul Ford said the reason mobile app stores still dominate over browser-targeted apps is money, since Google and Apple profit heavily from the current system, stated without further evidence given.
- [25:08] Paul Ford summarized the product as an office suite for people in WhatsApp and Signal, not a new web office suite.
- [28:15] Paul Ford said the plan is to keep the tool on GitHub, listen to feedback, make safe decisions for users, and not monetize it.
- [29:52] Paul Ford said the project is under the MIT license and already has lots of forks, which he calls essentially public domain.
- No explicit disagreement between the host and Paul Ford appears in the extracted points; the closest tension is Paul Ford's own acknowledgment at [11:45] that the privacy-by-design tool could still be rebuilt to send data to a server if someone were nefarious.
- Quotable take: Paul Ford on the tool's reach, 'doing good on product time' [08:58].
- Quotable take: Paul Ford on Google Drive, calling it a place where he has 'failed for 10 years' [16:06].
- Quotable take: Paul Ford on a possible use case, imagining a 'Paul's blog' Blue Sky account posting a different document every day [27:14].
- What we do know is that Anthropic took an $80.
- 5-inch OLED display, it's thinner and lighter, and it's $100 more expensive than the last one.
How this brief was shaped: Discourse (interview / podcast / video essay) · confidence Medium
Transcript shows David Pierce hosting a two-voice exchange discussing a product's surprise popularity and a blog post about software design philosophy, which is classic podcast interview structure, while OCR shows only a promo graphic and an unrelated TinyLittleOffice.com screen rather than a build walkthrough.
The lens sets this brief's structure, never its facts — every claim is held to the same citation and fact-check standard.
Jump to a moment
0:00Intro0:42Show Intro and Big Question0:5790 Seconds on the Verge2:26Where the Computer Is2:55Meet Paul Ford and Tiny Little Office4:31Origin Story Tiny Sheet6:23How Data Fits in URLs10:35Privacy and Hash Links14:09Sharing Tradeoffs and Ownership17:33Vibe Coding Makes It Possible19:14Browser Grade Encryption21:00Web Apps Versus App Stores21:36Ephemeral Docs In URLs23:32Group Chat Office Suite24:18Phishing And Safety Limits25:30Constraints And BlueSky Publishing27:39Open Source Growth Plan30:21URL Limits And Future Ideas32:56Theater Pitch For Holmes Doc35:48Feedback And Subscribe
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