Editing your files outside visualOS (and AI agents)

The rule

The authoritative copy of your workspace is canvas-data.json. The per-folder board.json files and the .md documents next to them are a mirror generated from it — kept fresh on every save so your data is always readable in the open. The mirror flows one way: app → files. If you edit a board.json or an .md in a text editor, the canvas won’t change — and your edit will be overwritten the next time visualOS saves that board.

What works great

• Reading and searching. grep through your notes, open documents in any Markdown editor, preview images — it’s all ordinary files.
• Feeding a project to an AI agent. Every folder is self-contained: hand an agent just Client — Sable/ and it sees that project’s board.json, documents and images — nothing else. Ideal for “summarize this project” or “draft a brief from these notes”.
• Adding new files. New images and PDFs dropped into a board’s folder are properly adopted via the New Items pool.
• Archiving & sharing. Zip a folder and send it — the recipient can read everything without visualOS.

What to avoid

• Don’t edit board.json or mirrored .md files expecting the canvas to update — changes are lost on the next save. Make content changes in the app.
• Never edit or delete canvas-data.json by hand. That’s the master file; hand-editing risks the whole workspace (though version history would have your back).
• Don’t let agents write into the folder structure — give them read access, and take their output back into visualOS yourself (or have them drop new PDFs/images, which the pool handles cleanly).