FAQ & troubleshooting

Is my data locked in?

No — that's the founding principle. Everything is Markdown, BibTeX, JSON and SQLite on your own disk, and ros export --all produces a plain archive at any time.

I forgot my passphrase

Use your recovery code: Forgot passphrase? on the login dialog (or ros account recover). Your data survives intact because the recovery code wraps the same master key. Lost both? Your local data is still on your machines in plaintext — only the server-side ciphertext becomes unreadable. Delete the account and re-register; your devices re-upload everything.

The phone says "Failed host lookup"

DNS. Check the server URL, try the address in the phone's browser (…/v1/health should answer), toggle airplane mode, and if you use an ad-blocking Private DNS note that newly registered domains are often blocked for their first days.

The app says the daemon version doesn't match

Desktop app and ros CLI ship together and must match — install the full package rather than updating one half. The installer restarts the background daemon automatically.

What happens on conflicting edits?

Field-level newest-wins with well-defined ordering; long-text losers are kept as revisions on the entry. You never lose a version silently.

Can my advisor read my workspace if we share a lab?

No. Labs are separate encrypted spaces; your private workspaces stay private. You publish chosen elements into the lab — sharing is per-element and explicit.

How big does the server get?

Operations are tiny; the weight is library PDFs and attachments, roughly a gigabyte per heavy user. Experiment output files never leave your machine.

Where do I report a bug?

During the beta: reply to the person who invited you, with what you did, what you expected, and what happened. Screenshots help. On Linux, ~/.researchos/daemon.log often contains the story.