Substrate
The whole rail in one window, on your own desktop.
Everything you do at a computer happens inside a tool that keeps its own account of you. The terminal, the editor, whatever AI you talk to, the place your notes live. Each one knows the part of you it saw, and when you stop using it, what it knew goes with it.
~alter Substrate is the window. A desktop program holding a terminal, a file explorer, an editor, an ask pane, a review pane, your agent sessions side by side and ~Alter, all reading one record.
What opens in it
A window that only ever held a terminal would not be worth building. Substrate is where the whole platform opens, so everything ~alter does sits in the same window as the work it is about.
Your name
One name that is yours rather than an account somebody else holds, and it is the thing every record, reader and agreement below attaches to. the handle protocol.
Connectors
Pair a source you already use so the record under your name is read from what you have actually done, and nothing is ever read from something you did not pair. the connectors.
Threads
What gets read is the trail you leave while you are working towards something, never a certificate at the end.
Collectives
A union, a club, a trade body or a group of people who have never met hold a record on the same terms you do.
Identity Income
When somebody reads your record they pay for the answer, three quarters of what they pay is yours, and you set what may be read before anyone asks. it is live today.
Querying the field
Ask a situation-shaped question of the field instead of filling in a fixed schema. the tools that do it today.
The read log
Every read of you leaves a record, so who asked and what they were given is something you can go and look at.
Consent
What may be read from you is set category by category, before anyone asks, and you can take it back at any point. the consent model.
Credentials
Prove a trait, a skill or a result without handing over the document it came from, and the reader can check it without contacting us. verifiable credentials.
Matching
Being found for what actually fits you, read as a belonging tier rather than a score you are ranked by.
Accords
The agreement is the unit, the parties set the terms, and more than two of them can sign one. the protocol stack.
Agents
An agent acting in your name carries which person is accountable for what it then does, which is the question every agent protocol leaves open. agent rails.
Every person who joins completes a gap nobody else can, so the record of us is factually worse for your absence. It stays alive because people keep choosing to be known.
The desktop is not the only window. Your identity already reaches your phone, and a native app there is what comes next.
Start without it
Nothing here is a prerequisite, and waiting for it costs you the time in between. The record this window opens onto is the same one ~alter holds now, so a handle claimed today is the handle it opens as.
- Install the CLI and claim a handle, which takes one command.
- Point the AI you already use at the identity server.
- Set what may be read before anyone asks.