file map
Every file in your vault, and what it is for.
Your vault is a plain folder — this page names every file in it. For why it is built this way, read where your data lives.
vault/
├─ .yapyap-vault.json the vault's identity card, written once
├─ inbox/ drop audio here and it becomes a recording
├─ recordings/
│ └─ 2026/08/ one folder per recording, dated
│ └─ 2026-08-08-1417-a1b2c3d4/
│ ├─ audio.flac the audio, as yapyap recorded it
│ ├─ audio.md the transcript, in your chosen format
│ └─ source.m4a an import, kept exactly as you gave it
├─ logs/
│ └─ <machine>/ the record: transcripts, titles, marks,
│ └─ *.plog speakers — append-only, signed, mergeable
├─ catalog.<id>.json speakers, vocabulary, lenses, chats
├─ installs/ one small file per machine using this vault
└─ .trash/ deleted recordings wait here for 30 daysthe files
| file | what it is | safe to touch? |
|---|---|---|
audio.flac | a capture — 16 kHz stereo FLAC | copy freely, do not edit in place |
source.<ext> | an imported file, byte-for-byte original | yours — it is your file |
audio.md / .txt / .vtt / .srt / .json / .csv | the transcript beside the audio; the extension follows Settings → your vault → transcript format | read and copy freely — yapyap rewrites it when the transcript changes |
logs/<machine>/*.plog | the record itself: every transcript, title, mark and speaker assignment, as signed append-only entries | leave it to yapyap — this is your data |
catalog.<install-id>.json | everything that is not a single recording | leave it to yapyap |
.yapyap-vault.json | vault identity | leave it alone |
installs/*.json | which machines use this vault, last seen when | harmless |
inbox/ | the staging folder — audio you drop here is imported and moved out | yours — put files in, take them back out |
.trash/ | deleted recordings, same folder layout, purged after 30 days | rescue files from here any time |
An earlier version of yapyap also kept a recording.<id>.json metadata
file inside each recording folder. Those are leftovers, and yapyap
tidies them away on its own — once every machine using the vault has
upgraded, so nothing still needs them.
what you can do in this folder
- Add audio. Drop any audio file (mp3, m4a, flac, wav, ogg, opus and
friends) in
inbox/. yapyap moves it out into a dated folder and transcribes it. A file left anywhere else in the vault is not touched. - Take audio. Copy any file out. Nothing breaks.
- Rescue a deletion. Move a folder out of
.trash/back intorecordings/— the watcher re-imports it. - Back up. Copy the whole folder. That copy plus Rebuild library on any machine is a full restore.
what yapyap never does
Deleting a file outside the app never makes yapyap delete anything
else — absence is treated as "missing", not "remove". And nothing is
erased on deletion until the 30 days in .trash/ pass.
not in the vault
Models, the search index, caches, and the license live in the app-data
folder (com.xiduzo.yapyap). They are all rebuildable — the vault is
the only folder worth backing up.