Prototype Alpha · Labs / R&D · Python → Rust

A Smarter
Archive Format

Research project: a next-generation archive format with adaptive compression, full-text search, versioning, and encryption. It is designed for collections where what is inside the files matters, not only the files. Codename: .apx.

This is a research project. No release date, no public build. Architecture is being proven before any consumer product is built. Listed here for transparency on what we are working on and why.

.apx
Archive format
M0
Current milestone
Python
Prototype lang
Rust
Target core lang
The Problem

Why Build a New Archive Format?

Zip and tar were designed in a different era. They treat an archive as a flat list of files, with no deduplication, search, relationships or adaptive compression. Every repack is a full copy.

For structured projects such as codebases, design assets and research data, the archive format itself should understand the content.

Content-Addressed Deduplication

Identical chunks stored once. Incremental archives without redundancy.

Adaptive Compression

Per-chunk, per-content-type algorithm selection. Code ≠ images ≠ audio.

Full-Text & Metadata Search

Find a file inside an archive without extracting. SQLite metadata index.

Versioning & Delta Storage

Track changes over time. Only changed chunks stored in each version.

Encryption

First-class encrypted archives, not an afterthought.
Milestones

Proving the Architecture First

Each milestone must be benchmarked and proven before the next begins. No premature optimization.

M0
Current — Prototype Alpha

Foundation

SQLite metadata schema, archive inspector, verification, and benchmark framework.

SQLite schema alpha inspect alpha verify Benchmark framework Unit test skeleton

Basic Archive I/O

alpha create and alpha extract. Single-pass flat archive, no deduplication yet. Baseline benchmarks established.

Content-Addressed Deduplication

Chunk boundaries, rolling hash, content-addressed chunk store. Measure space savings on real project trees.

Adaptive Compression

Per-chunk algorithm selection. Benchmark zstd, brotli, and lz4 across content types. Choose per file signature.

Search · Versioning · Encryption · Rust Core

Full-text metadata search, delta versioning, first-class encryption, and migration of the core to Rust for performance.

Long-Term Vision

What It Could Become

If the research proves out, these are the product directions that follow.

Developer Archiver

A replacement for zip and tar in developer workflows: fast, searchable, deduplicated project archives.

Creative Asset Storage

An archive format for design studios and video teams, whose assets are large, versioned and reused.

Encrypted Backup Format

Encrypted, deduplicated, searchable offline backups, and the data layer for future LPagesAppLabs products.

Research & Data Archives

Structured archives for research datasets, with provenance, versioning and relationship graphs.
Verifiable, Not Claimed

Security Posture, Measured Live

A compression project asks you to trust it with your files. Before it earns that, this page has to earn it first. Here is what this origin actually does, read out of the page you are reading right now by your own browser. Open devtools and check any line of it.

Third-party origins loaded
0
No fonts, analytics or tag manager loaded from another host
Cookies set
0
No consent banner, because there is nothing to consent to
Browser storage entries
0
Nothing written to localStorage or sessionStorage
Content Security Policy
default-src 'self'
No unsafe-inline, no unsafe-eval, no external origin permitted
HTTPS enforcement
2-year
Strict-Transport-Security with includeSubDomains
Capabilities denied
9
Camera, microphone, geolocation, payment, USB and ad-topics APIs

The values above are the ones we ship. With JavaScript enabled they are replaced by what your own browser actually observed, measured at —. A row turns red if reality disagrees with us.

Who we are, on the record · How we build it ↗

Get in Touch

Follow the Research

Interested in this problem space? Get in touch.

contact@lpagesapplabs.com