unzippr runs offline · nothing uploads

The upload you didn't notice

note 02 · workshop · 5 jul 2026

.zip whose server? retention: unstated this tab's memory retention: until you close it both are one click. only one is an event you can't take back.
fig — the fork in the road that the progress bar hides.

Here is an audit anyone can replicate in ten minutes. Search "unzip files online." Open the first five results. On each, drag in a test zip and watch the network tab. The pattern repeats: the file leaves — POST after POST, your archive traveling to infrastructure whose owner, jurisdiction, logging policy and retention schedule are collectively answered by a shrug and a cartoon mascot.

What travels in zips

Think about when a person reaches for a web-based opener: they're on a machine without tools — a work laptop under IT lockdown, a borrowed computer, a Chromebook. And what needs opening in those moments is rarely wallpaper: it's the client handover, the payroll export, the legal discovery bundle, the university records dump — files zipped precisely because they're a package of something that matters. The moment of least tooling is the moment of highest stakes, and the top search results monetize exactly that squeeze. Most say "files deleted after N hours." All require believing it. None can prove it, structurally, because their architecture is the thing you're being asked to trust.

Trust the architecture, not the promise

The alternative isn't a better promise — it's an architecture where the promise is unnecessary. A static page that ships its decompressor to your browser has no upload endpoint; the archive is opened by code running on your machine, and "we never see your files" stops being a policy and becomes a property, checkable in the network tab (which stays silent) or by flipping on airplane mode (which changes nothing). This is unzippr's whole argument, and it generalizes: for any tool handling sensitive files, the first audit question isn't "do they seem trustworthy?" but "does their design make trust irrelevant?" A promise can break on one bad quarter or one subpoena. A missing server can't.