> What is sad is that they used to be local files first note app and then they moved to sqlite citing some sync and performance issues.

They're still a local-first note application. It's just slightly harder for you to edit your notes externally, and not even by that much - it's very easy to directly query (read and write) SQLite databases, and if you really cared you could have made a script to grab a note, export it to a temporary text file, allow you to edit it, then update the SQLite database.

> I can't version controlled backup and sync those files

You absolutely can - you can dump SQLite databases to text files that contain SQL queries that will restore the database that you can then backup and sync: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75675/how-to-dump-the-da...

> then they moved to sqlite citing some sync and performance issues

Yes, that's because "plain text" files are bad for performance and harder to sync correctly. For people who (1) have over a hundred thousand notes they want to keep (like me) and (2) want maximum confidence that they're not going to lose years worth of work, that's incredibly important.

The devs made the right choice. You can always write scripts to interface with a SQLite database with an external editor. You can't take plain text files and magically make them as fast and durable as a database.