By humans · For humans · Stewarded only by humans · Founded 2026
Most of what people create, record, and share today will be gone within a generation. Not because it isn't worth keeping — but because no system exists that is designed to keep it.
HumanZion is that system. We build open-source tools that let anyone preserve their digital files for decades and centuries, on their own terms. This ecosystem was created by human beings, is maintained by human beings, and will only ever serve human beings.
HumanZion is a non-profit project. We do not have investors, shareholders, or an exit strategy. Our only obligation is to the people who entrust their archives to this ecosystem — and to the people who will inherit those archives long after we are gone.
Everything we build is open source. If HumanZion ever ceases to exist as an organization, the tools live on. The archives live on. That is the design.
For the parent who wants their children to have their photos. For the family historian who has been scanning letters for twenty years. For anyone who has felt the quiet fear of a hard drive failing, a service shutting down, or a file format becoming unreadable.
You don't need to be technical to use HumanZion. But if you are technical, you can run every part of it yourself.
The word Human in HumanZion is not a brand decision. It is a founding covenant. This ecosystem exists to preserve human memory, and it will only ever be built, governed, and used by human beings.
Automated systems, AI agents, and non-human software may not participate in this ecosystem — as contributors, operators, or users. Humans may not use AI tools to interface with HumanZion on their behalf. Every action taken within this ecosystem must originate from a living human being making a deliberate choice.
This is not a technical limitation. It is a principle. As long as human beings exist on this earth, they are the only stewards this archive will ever have.
This principle has consequences. We have thought carefully about each of them. Here is our reasoning, stated plainly.
We keep the scope deliberately narrow. A system designed to do everything tends to do nothing for a hundred years. HumanZion does four things, and does them well.
The iOS app, desktop client, or command-line tool brings your files into your archive. Automatic deduplication, checksumming, and tagging happen in the background. You don't manage a folder structure — you describe what you have, and the system organizes it.
Your archive can live on your own device, on cloud storage you already own, or on HumanZion-managed infrastructure. You are never locked in. You can move your entire archive to a new location at any time, in an open format that doesn't require HumanZion to read.
Every file is checked on a schedule. If a file degrades, a storage provider changes its terms, or a format becomes obsolete, HumanZion alerts you and guides the migration. Preservation is not a one-time act — it is an ongoing commitment, and the system carries it out quietly on your behalf.
You can designate archive heirs, grant access to family members, and leave instructions for what should happen to your files when you are gone. This is the part that most archiving tools ignore entirely. We consider it central.
There is no single right way to use HumanZion. The ecosystem is designed so that different people with different levels of technical comfort and different kinds of resources can all arrive at the same outcome.
| Self-hosted For the technical | Run the full HumanZion server on your own hardware or a VPS. Docker and bare-metal configurations are provided. You own everything, including the storage and the software. The community maintains documentation and supports community members who take this path. | Self-host guide → |
| iOS App For iPhone users | Archive photos, documents, and any file type directly from your iPhone. The app connects to your own cloud storage or to HumanZion-managed infrastructure. Background sync runs quietly. You don't have to think about it — until the day you need it. | App waitlist → |
| Bring your storage BYOB cloud | Already have an account with a cloud storage provider — Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, or any S3-compatible service? Connect it. HumanZion manages the archival logic; your existing storage holds the files. No new accounts required. | Storage connectors → |
| Managed storage HumanZion-hosted | For those who do not want to manage storage infrastructure, HumanZion offers hosted storage with geographic redundancy and a long-term retention commitment. Unlike a commercial service, our commitment is written into our organizational charter — not a terms-of-service document that can be updated overnight. | Pricing coming soon → |
We believe that a tool designed to outlast its creators must be fully auditable, fully forkable, and fully independent of any single organization's continued existence. These repositories are the archive infrastructure itself.
If you are reading this in 2060, or 2100, or later — hello. We hoped you would be there.
HumanZion was started by ordinary people who noticed that ordinary human memories were disappearing. Not because they were unimportant, but because the systems that held them were designed for profit, not permanence. We wanted to change that.
We made one promise that we ask you to keep: this archive is for human beings, and it will only ever be run by human beings. Whatever the world looks like when you read this — whatever tools exist, whatever pressures exist to automate or delegate — please hold that line. The moment a non-human system becomes the steward of this archive, it is no longer HumanZion. It is something else.
We do not expect to be here forever. No organization is. What we hope is that the tools we built are still useful, the archives are still intact, and that someone — maybe you — decided to keep going.
If HumanZion as an organization has ceased to exist and you have found this code: please use it. Fork it. Rename it if you must. But keep the covenant. The goal was never to preserve our name. It was to preserve the photographs, the letters, the recordings — the evidence that specific human beings lived and loved and made things worth keeping. That work belongs to the living.
That goal does not have an expiration date.
Consumer hard drives have an expected lifespan of three to five years. Most people are unaware when a drive has begun to fail, and discover it only when files become unreadable.
A file is only as readable as the software that can open it. Formats that were common twenty years ago are already inaccessible on modern machines without specialized tools.
The average consumer cloud storage service is less than fifteen years old. Google, Apple, Amazon, and Dropbox have all changed, cancelled, or restructured services that people depended on.
Backup tools are designed for disaster recovery. Cloud storage is designed for access and sharing. Nothing is explicitly designed for one-hundred-year preservation. HumanZion is.