Guide 4
Passwords & notes
Small data, high value. An afternoon's work.
Layers this moves to you: DataCompute
What you gain
Your password vault is the master key to everything else, and your notes are your mind on paper. Both are small — megabytes — which makes them the easiest things on this site to bring home, and the most worth doing.
Passwords
- Bitwarden is open source and has a free hosted tier that’s already end-to-end encrypted — a fine tier 0 answer.
- Vaultwarden is a tiny self-hosted server that speaks the Bitwarden protocol, so the same apps work against your own box.
- KeePassXC uses a single encrypted file and no server at all; sync it with Syncthing or your own file sync.
Every mainstream password manager exports to a standard file; import takes minutes. Then turn on two-factor authentication for the vault itself.
Notes
- Obsidian stores notes as plain text files on your device — no account needed — and syncs however your files sync.
- Joplin is open source, encrypts end-to-end, and can sync through your own server or a file share.
- Standard Notes if you want something simpler with encryption built in.
Plain text files are the most future-proof format there is. Twenty years from now, you’ll still be able to read them.
What you still rent
Nothing, unless you choose a hosted encrypted tier for convenience — which is fine, because encrypted on your side means the host can’t read it.
What this looks like at each budget
- Tier 0, $0
- Bitwarden’s free hosted tier plus Obsidian with notes synced by Syncthing. No server, no cost.
- Tier 1, one small box
- Vaultwarden and Joplin’s sync target on the small box. Your vault never leaves the house.
- Tier 2, a real home server
- Same, with the backups guide making sure the vault is in your encrypted off-site copy.
- Tier 3, the hobby got serious
- Nothing more to add; this category doesn’t need horsepower.
Hand it to Claude
Fill in the brackets, paste the whole thing into Claude (or any assistant you trust), and let it walk you through the rest one step at a time.
I want to move my passwords and notes to tools I control. Currently I use [password manager] and [notes app]. Devices: [list, including phones and browsers]. Budget tier: [0 / 1 / 2 / 3 — see de-clouding.com/tiers]. Comfort: [none / some / fluent]. Recommend one open-source password manager setup and one notes setup for my tier, in two sentences each. Then walk me through: exporting from my current tools, importing to the new ones, setting up the apps and browser extensions on every device, turning on two-factor for the vault, and verifying everything works for a week before I delete the export files and close the old accounts. One step at a time, waiting for my confirmation. Treat the export files as highly sensitive and remind me to delete them securely when we're done.