Ownership can take different forms
Local files are a meaningful form of control. Epicenter’s approach is appealing if you want to inspect, edit and combine your data with tools you already know. A service should not dismiss those advantages simply because it offers hosting.
SEED’s intended contribution is the work around the archive: help obtain selected history, reconcile what arrived, preserve original material and make it useful through search, stories and chosen sharing. The value has to be demonstrated in that whole journey. Hosting alone is not an advantage.
Compare a real release with a real release
Epicenter’s homepage, released Whispering and its wider development repository represent different scopes. The Whispering v7.11.0 notes describe a concrete transcription release. They should not be read as proof that every application under development is already delivered as one complete personal archive.
The same standard applies to SEED. Our feature pages describe the product we are building; a waitlist invitation does not establish that its complete capture, memory and restoration experience is available.
A useful decision test
Choose one record you care about and trace its path: capture, original file, metadata, correction, backup and recovery on another computer. Decide how much of that process you want to operate yourself. Keep the original and the recovery instructions wherever you ultimately choose to work.
For a memoir or a family archive, also consider the effort required to turn the saved material into something another person can actually read and understand.