What is it?
ZDDC is a convention, not a platform. Every deliverable's filename encodes its tracking number, revision, status, and title; every transmittal folder is date-prefixed and self-describing. A plain shared folder becomes a fully searchable, auditable information-management system — no server, no database, no software required to read the archive.
The four tools below are optional interfaces around this structure. Each is a single self-contained HTML file that works two ways: open it locally and point it at a folder on your disk, or put it behind any web server (including the optional zddc-server described below) and use it over the network. Same on-disk layout either way.
Try the tools
Each tool is published in three channels. Stable is versioned and immutable; beta and alpha are mutable previews of in-flight work.
Append ?v=alpha (or ?v=0.0.4, etc.) to any URL to switch versions for a single request — useful for sharing a link to an exact build. Direct local-folder access requires a Chromium-based browser (the File System Access API is unavailable in Firefox / Safari). Browse all versions →
zddc-server (optional)
The tools work two ways over the same on-disk archive. Pick whichever fits your team:
Local directory mode
Open a tool, click Add Directory, point it at a folder. The tool reads files via the File System Access API. No upload, no server, no account.
Enough for individual users and small teams on a shared drive (network share, Dropbox, OneDrive, syncthing).
Online mode
Take the same local directory and put it behind any web server (nginx, Caddy, Apache, or zddc-server). The Archive Browser tool talks to the server's directory listings instead of the local filesystem — read-only, works in any browser.
zddc-server is a small Go binary purpose-built to serve ZDDC archives. Any web server gives you online mode; zddc-server adds things a generic web server can't:
- Access control via
.zddcfiles. Behind a reverse proxy that authenticates users and sets anX-Auth-Request-Emailrequest header,zddc-serverconsults YAML.zddcfiles in directories — cascading bottom-up; deeper rules override. No database, no admin UI. - Virtual
.archiveURL space.GET /Project/.archive/123-XYZ.htmlresolves to the canonical revision file at request time. Computed from filenames; no cache, no separate index file. - Per-request access logging keyed to the authenticated user.
- TLS, ETags, conditional GET, CORS, autoindex. The mundane glue.
The on-disk layout is the same in both modes. Stop the server and the directory is still a perfectly valid ZDDC archive that opens in local-directory mode. The server is convenience, not lock-in.
Source, environment-variable contract, container image, and ACL syntax: codeberg.org/VARASYS/ZDDC zddc/ · pre-built image at codeberg.org/varasys/zddc-server (channel-tagged :stable, :beta, :alpha).
Install on your server
For a self-contained deployment with no dependency on this site at runtime, download install.zip and extract it into the document root of your file server. To make a deployment auto-track a published channel from this site, use one of the track-*.zip bundles instead — each contains five tiny bootstrap stubs that fetch the named channel on every page load.
Self-contained
Bundled stable tools + sample project bootstrap directory. No external dependencies after install.
Track stable
Five level-2 bootstrap stubs. Drop over the deployment root to auto-track latest stable.
See bootstrap/README.md for the install model, the per-project / per-tool override pattern, and the audit grep that lets you see what every project on a deployment is pointing at.
Learn more
- Technical Reference — the full ZDDC convention: filename format, tracking numbers, revisions, status codes, folder naming, transmittal workflow.
- All releases — every version and channel build of every tool, with per-version pin URLs.
- codeberg.org/VARASYS/ZDDC — source code, issue tracker, contributor docs.