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Alex Towell
Alex Towell

Posted on • Originally published at metafunctor.com

The Long Echo Toolkit: Preserving Your Digital Life

#python #cli #opensource #sqlite

Earlier this year I wrote about Long Echo—a philosophy for preserving AI conversations in ways that remain accessible across decades. The core insight was graceful degradation: designing systems that fail progressively, not catastrophically.

Since then, I've built out a complete toolkit for preserving all personal digital content—not just conversations, but bookmarks (including videos, podcasts, articles) and books. These three tools form a coherent system for managing your intellectual life.

The Toolkit

Tool Domain Install
CTK AI Conversations pip install conversation-tk
BTK Bookmarks & Media pip install bookmark-tk
EBK eBooks & Documents pip install ebk

All three share a common architecture and philosophy, but each is deeply specialized for its domain.

Shared Architecture

SQLite-First Storage

Every tool uses local SQLite databases you own. No cloud dependency. Queryable with standard tools even if the CLI disappears:

# Works even if the tools are gone
sqlite3 conversations.db "SELECT title FROM conversations WHERE title LIKE '%python%'"
sqlite3 bookmarks.db "SELECT url, title FROM bookmarks WHERE stars = 1"
sqlite3 library.db "SELECT title, author FROM books WHERE favorite = 1"
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Interactive Shells with Virtual Filesystems

Navigate your data like a Unix filesystem:

$ btk shell
btk:/$ cd tags/programming/python
btk:/tags/programming/python$ ls
3298  4095  5124  (bookmark IDs)
btk:/tags/programming/python$ cat 4095/title
Advanced Python Techniques
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Reading Queues

Track what you're reading, watching, or working through:

btk queue add 42 --priority high
btk queue next
btk queue progress 42 --percent 75
btk queue estimate-times  # Auto-estimate from content length
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LLM Integration

All three tools integrate with LLMs for intelligent features:

btk content auto-tag --all
ctk auto-tag --model ollama/llama3
ebk enrich 42  # Enhance metadata with LLM
ctk say "summarize my conversations about Rust"
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Network Analysis

Discover relationships in your data:

ctk net embeddings --all
ctk net similar 42
ctk net clusters
ctk net central  # Most connected conversations
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BTK: More Than Bookmarks

BTK evolved from a simple bookmark manager into a comprehensive media archive:

btk media detect  # Scan bookmarks for media URLs
btk media import-playlist "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=..."
btk media import-channel "@3blue1brown"
btk media import-podcast "https://feed.example.com/rss"
btk content refresh --all --workers 50  # Cache for offline access
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Smart collections provide auto-updating views: /unread, /popular, /broken, /untagged, /pdfs.

CTK: Conversation Intelligence

CTK manages AI conversations with tree structure preservation and network analysis:

ctk import chatgpt_export.json --format openai
ctk import claude_export.json --format anthropic
ctk tree 42  # Visualize branching conversation
ctk net clusters  # Discover topic clusters
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EBK: Library Management

EBK handles ebooks with semantic search, virtual libraries, and annotations:

ebk import ~/Calibre\ Library/
ebk similar 42  # Find books like this one
ebk vlib add "Machine Learning" 42 43 44
ebk note add 42 "Chapter 3 insight: ..."
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Multi-Format Export

The key to long-term preservation—export in formats that will always be readable:

ctk export conversations.jsonl --format jsonl
btk export bookmarks.html html --hierarchical
ebk export catalog.html --format html
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Each level provides graceful degradation: Full tool → SQLite → JSON → HTML → Plain text.

Why This Matters

Your intellectual life is worth preserving:

  • The debugging session that saved a project
  • The research trail that led to a breakthrough
  • The books that shaped your thinking

These deserve better than "hope the cloud doesn't disappear."

Full post with more details: https://metafunctor.com/post/2025-12-16-long-echo-toolkit/

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