Docs → Open the envelope

Open the envelope yourself

Ownership you can test, not take on faith. Your export reads without Virgil. No Virgil account, no Virgil anything.

Open it - no install, no tools of ours

Your export is a .mve.json file - plain JSON. Open it in any text editor. To pretty-print it in one line with what is already on your machine:

python3 -m json.tool your-export.mve.json

That is the whole ceremony. Any JSON library, any text editor, any script you write can read it. No proprietary blob, no decryption ceremony on the file itself - and nothing of Virgil's required to look inside.

The free converter, while you are here

npx memvelope conversations.json

That one-liner is the format's reference converter: it turns a raw ChatGPT or Claude export into this same envelope shape, on your own machine, with nothing uploaded anywhere. Node's npx fetches the published memvelope package, version 0.1.0 on the npm registry, MIT-licensed. One scope note: the converter reads provider exports, not envelopes - your Virgil export is already an envelope, which is why opening it needs no converter at all.

What is inside

Every fact with its source, when it landed, its [you said]/[inferred] label, and its revision history. Superseded facts stay in the trail with their dates.

The format is open

Memvelope is an open format we maintain in the open. The spec, schema, and converter are public and MIT at memvelope.com, with the source mirrored at github.com/memvelope/memvelope.

Try it without an export

memvelope.com/sample.mve.json hosts a complete sample envelope. Open it in your browser or any text editor.

The honest version

This is a young format Virgil maintains. The guarantee is structural: MIT, public spec, plain JSON. It is not a popularity claim.