Exocortex Guide

1. Install and update

1. Download Exocortex v0.56.10-test on an Android 6.0 or later device.
2. Open the APK. If Android blocks it, allow installation from the browser or file manager used for this download, then open it again.
3. Check that you are installing Exocortex. Its package name is com.toexperience.app.

For an existing compatible test installation, install the update over it. Keep a backup outside Exocortex first. Do not uninstall or clear app data to update: both remove the private archive. If Android reports a signature conflict, keep your data and investigate the conflict before removing anything.

To remove the app, use Settings → Apps → Exocortex → Uninstall after saving anything you want to keep elsewhere.

APK SHA-256: c4cdc98c3a91f0e49d387e5fb9116e667af18fdc019500800d73bfd66cd9c218.

2. Purpose

Your life leaves records across devices, services and other people’s systems. Exocortex brings selected records home to an offline Android archive: writing, conversations, files, choices, measurements and traces, kept with their context.

It is externalized memory and a foundation for cognitive tools that remain yours. You can retain a record without predicting every future use for it, revisit it through different questions, and choose a different intelligence to interpret it. The archive provides continuity while models change.

The person, the archive and a model made from it are distinct. Records preserve partial evidence of a life. An interpretation may help you understand that evidence; neither the record nor the interpretation contains the whole person.

3. Find your way around

The home search reaches across modules. Combine words with a day or date interval, or use the date filter alone. Matching counts lead into the corresponding results. Records without a usable timestamp are omitted from date-filtered results rather than assigned an invented date.

Inbox stays above the independently scrolling modules. It gathers new images, videos and downloads that Android makes available after installation. Open an item to choose a compatible destination. Me · Self Archive offers its root, a folder and an optional note. Successful filing removes the item from the queue; backing out or a failed save leaves it waiting. Your gallery or Downloads original stays where it was.

What the archive holds

• Me and People: your own information, changes over time, Self Archive, Daily Selfies, family relationships and records of the people in your life.
• Writings: Conversations, AI Sessions, Notes and Journal, with communication kept distinct from the people represented in it.
• Experiences and preferences: Media, Taste and Wardrobe. Gaming provides a focused view of the same videogame records held in Media.
• Tools and activity: Apps, Organization, Education, Browser and Locations, preserving the context of what was recorded.
• Body and private records: Sleep; Medical, with Blood Tests, Scans and Genetics; and the separate NSFW archive.

Where rearrangement is available, unlock the layout, hold a card and move it; lock it again when you are done. Settings can hide modules without deleting their data. Media title search is available through its nested browsing levels.

The app uses the device’s default font and text scaling. Light Gray and Dark are in the header; Settings also offers Light and Pitch Black / OLED.

4. Data and protection

The Android manifest has no INTERNET permission. Exocortex cannot make network requests. Its database and managed files live in private app storage until you deliberately export them or open a file with another app.

Before adding sensitive records, consider enabling App lock and Screen protection in Settings. App lock uses Android’s device authentication. Screen protection asks Android to block ordinary screenshots, recording and recent-app previews. These reduce common exposure; they do not protect an unlocked archive from a compromised operating system or another camera.

Local functions can request the applicable access to images, video, storage, contacts, call history, SMS or notifications. Permissions and Android’s file providers determine what is available. Denying access limits that function; there is no network fallback.

An export leaves the app’s private storage boundary. The folder, cloud drive, messenger or AI you give it to has its own access and retention rules. Conversations, photographs, locations and genetic records may also describe people who never chose to share them. Possessing a record does not settle their consent.

This website serves documentation and downloads. It has no archive upload and does not receive the contents of your app.

5. Import records

Open Settings → Import & Backup Center for the available entry points, or import within the relevant module. Download an export from its provider first, then select that local file in Exocortex. The app does not sign into services or fetch their histories.

Supported formats become structured records. Retained provider exports remain available as sources, including material an adapter cannot yet interpret. A recognized platform name is not a promise to parse every version of that provider’s export.

AI Sessions distinguishes conversations from prompt-only activity. For example, a Gemini activity record without a reply stays an activity record. A new full-history import replaces the previous parsed sessions only after successful parsing; malformed or zero-result imports keep the previous sessions unchanged.

Imports display progress and hold normal navigation until a result is ready. Whole-archive preparation can be cancelled before changes begin. Once archive records or retained files are being applied, cancellation is unavailable. Keep the app running and read the result: an error during incremental application may leave some imported records or files.

6. Images and metadata

Supported new still images become quality-90 WebP working copies at their decoded resolution, with EXIF orientation applied. Current supported containers are JPEG, PNG, WebP and static GIF. Existing managed WebP copies avoid re-encoding. Cropping uses full-resolution pixels and retains source lineage.

Available source names, types, dates, original size and content hash are kept separately from the stored file’s properties. Supported EXIF, XMP, colour-profile and other metadata blocks are retained in a companion file. Preserving a block does not mean every proprietary tag inside it is interpreted.

After successful storage, Exocortex removes its temporary original-image copy. It does not delete the source in your gallery or Downloads. Non-image files keep their bytes and embedded metadata, together with available provider details. Whole provider ZIP exports remain unchanged, including images inside them.

Managed exports and restores carry the metadata companions. Added and modified dates remain distinct from capture dates; unknown facts stay unknown. Metadata discarded by older versions cannot be recovered. Unsupported or animated images, malformed or oversized metadata, and motion-photo payloads are refused rather than silently flattened or stripped.

7. Export and back up

Export is available from the footer. Use a module export for a selected part of the archive and a full backup for recovery. Exports include readable text and structured manifests; applicable files and metadata travel alongside them. The versioned Charter explains the archive to a later reader.

The Import & Backup Center manages backups and can save a copy to Downloads. A backup kept only inside Exocortex disappears with the app, so retain a recovery copy elsewhere. Protect that copy according to what it contains.

An ordinary archive export is a backup or a readable slice. It grants no AI write capability. The question-packet workflow below is a separate, deliberately constrained exchange.

8. Evidence and interpretation

A browser visit establishes that a browser recorded an event; it does not establish attention, agreement or desire. Repeated interpretations of the same source are not independent corroboration. Missing information remains missing.

Confirmation records your decision, not a proof that the claim is true. Acceptance preserves origin and evidence, and an accepted inferred field can remain labelled inferred. Polished wording does not change a claim’s standing.

9. Work with an AI

Exocortex performs no semantic inference itself. You choose an external intelligence and move files between it and the archive. It has no direct database access.

1. Set the boundary. In AI Access, choose which resources may be included, excluded or shared as metadata only. Explicit exclusion wins.
2. Ask a question. Export a question packet. It carries the exact question, permitted records and revisions, allowed proposal actions and a return deadline. A private receipt records what was shared.
3. Use your chosen AI. Give it that file outside Exocortex. The packet includes instructions and a return template. If more context is needed, you decide whether to export another packet.
4. Bring proposals back. Import the structured return. The app validates its format, question and session binding, resource references and permitted actions before staging any proposals.
5. Review. Accept or dismiss proposals. The decision and proposal lineage are retained; a return cannot confirm itself or directly rewrite domain records.

The current return types are observations in authorized modules, Media additions and Apps classifications. Invalid, expired or replayed returns are quarantined. Valid returns are staged together in one transaction. This is distinct from ordinary archive imports, which can apply incrementally.

The checks establish that a return fits its authorization. They do not prove its reasoning, the truth of a proposal, the claimed model’s identity, or what an external service retains. Choose the smallest useful packet. Disabling a provider’s training use is not the same as zero retention.

10. The thinking behind it

Exocortex is a transhumanist tool: an attempt to extend memory and access to personal context while keeping that extension under the person’s control. Cognitive sovereignty means deciding what is retained, who may read it, what they may propose, and whether to accept or disconnect.

Its philosophical background is developed in Epistemic Forge:

• Agent Tomography considers how different traces can constrain a reconstruction of the agent that produced them, while remaining partial evidence.
• The Bandwidth of the Self follows communication into augmentation and deeper cognitive coupling, asking what control, provenance and the freedom to disconnect require.
• What You Actually Are develops the author’s account of a person as a living, self-maintaining process, and the distinction between preserving that process and making a copy.

These are philosophical foundations and research directions, not capabilities demonstrated by the app. Exocortex currently stops at file-based augmentation. It neither reconstructs a whole person nor performs mind uploading or biological-to-technological migration. Preserving evidence keeps future options open without settling those questions.

11. Limits and test standing

This is an active test build, not a stable public release. It supports Android 6.0 and later and targets Android 34. Host checks cover 145 Java sources, SDK compilation, database and metadata fixtures, source/DEX parity and valid v1/v2/v3 APK signatures under the continuing test certificate.

The owner has reported successful use, a populated migration and an earlier whole-archive import. Those observations do not establish complete restore reconciliation, every provider format, native image colour fidelity or behavior across devices. The real question/return loop and broader device tests remain open.

App lock is not a claim of separate archive encryption. Imports are not universally atomic. The development signing identity is not the future production identity. Keep recovery copies while testing.

12. Development

The direction is to bring more supported records home and improve the ways they can be inspected and shared. A separate cognitive-airlock companion, pairing and recipient-bound encryption are planned; this release does not include them. Any deeper coupling must preserve source attribution, review, refusal and a practical exit.

The canonical Android project is maintained separately from this website. Its checkpoint preserves source, history, tests and continuation notes. Website descriptions and downloads follow that verified app release; a website update does not add an Android capability.

13. Licensing and support

No public outbound licence has been adopted for the Exocortex test build or its source repository. Download access is not, by itself, a grant to redistribute, publish, sell or create a public fork.

The proposed launch structure is AGPLv3 for application code, CC BY-SA 4.0 for prose documentation, and a separate policy for the name, logo, artwork and official-build identity. This is a proposal, not an operative licence. Final rights review, licence files and production-signing arrangements remain to be completed.

The app has no ads, analytics, subscription, premium tier or paid export. Support is optional and unlocks nothing. In the offline app, external links are copied for you to open separately.

Website settings

Main site and the named parents above the page follow the site’s hierarchy. Guide and Settings use local pages where available.

Settings lets you hide the header and choose Light, Light Gray, Dark or Pitch Black / OLED. Light Gray is the first-visit default. The parent row and footer remain available when the header is hidden.

Choose System, DM Sans, Outfit, or Outfit headings with DM Sans body text in Settings. The preview and interface change immediately. Outfit is the first-visit default; fonts are served by these websites. Your saved selection is preserved.

Theme, header and font preferences are shared across andrazdjuric.com websites in this browser. They contain no document data or visitor identifier and are separate from installed application settings.

Contact in the footer opens the main site’s contact options in a new tab. Use it for questions, problem reports or suggestions.

The shared interface rules explain navigation, link markers, themes, raised surfaces and control states.