Dropbear assumes the user knows what these are, or is willing to look them up:

- A **shell** and how to run commands in it.
- **S3-compatible object storage** — what a bucket is, what a region is, how to get credentials.
- **Environment variables**, because that's how credentials get passed in.

It doesn't assume:

- Familiarity with Dropbear's internals. The docs explain the model.
- That you write Go. The binary is statically linked; you can use it without ever opening the source.
- That you're a sysadmin. You can use Dropbear on a laptop without thinking about distributed systems.

## Who this is _not_ for

- **People who want a polished GUI.** There is no GUI. There will probably never be a first-party GUI; a third-party TUI is on the wishlist.
- **People who want hand-holding for their setup.** Setup is currently a multi-flag `init` command and an env-var dance. It works, but it's rough. The bootstrap story will improve closer to 1.0.
- **People who can't tolerate occasional manual conflict resolution.** Dropbear writes conflict files; it doesn't merge them. You have to look at them.
- **People with a single device.** You don't need a sync tool. Use a backup tool.

## Who this _might_ be for

- **Self-hosters** who have a MinIO/Garage/SeaweedFS instance and don't want to push files through someone else's Dropbox.
- **R2/B2/Wasabi users** who like cheap object storage and want a sync layer on top.
- **People escaping Dropbox/iCloud/Drive** who want their files on storage they control without giving up multi-device sync.
- **Tinkerers** who have a USB drive that travels between machines and want it to behave correctly when it's not plugged in.
- **Agents** working on a codebase or notes that need to be synchronized across environments without setting up shared filesystems or remote-pairing protocols.

## The "smart enough to read the docs" line

Dropbear is a tool, not a product. There is a CLI, there are flags, there are exit codes, there is a manifest format. The docs cover what each piece does. If you find yourself wishing for a wizard, a setup script, or an installer — Dropbear is not the right shape for you yet. Come back at 1.0.