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Trust and standing

Kunuleco separates three questions that platforms usually blur: who are you (identity), can you be here (presence), and what may you do here (capability and standing).

Capabilities, not lists

Access in Kunuleco comes from holding an unforgeable token, not from appearing on a permission list. You grant an identity specific capabilities (read, write, …) on a capsule, and revoke them later:

grant notes Mira#7291 read,write revoke notes Mira#7291 list grants notes

Because a capability names the thing it opens, delegation is natural and revocation is clean. And because presence is not capability, someone can stand in your room without being able to open anything in it.

Standing: trust within a space

Standing is your trust level within a particular space. It rises from visitor to steward, and each tier unlocks deeper zones and more authority:

Tier Can…
Visitor Read the Public zone. Implicit; not a member
Newcomer Read and write in the Public zone: the first member tier
Familiar Enter and participate in the Common zone
Trusted Moderate Common (remove content, remove people)
Steward Enter the Private zone, govern the space, and grant standing to others

Check yours with standing. A Steward grants a tier with standing <user> <tier>.

Getting in: thresholds, knocks, vouches

Entry to a gated Hall flows through a knock queue: newcomers knock, the Steward reviews with knocks and uses accept / reject, and existing members can vouch for someone to speed them through. The Hall's threshold (open, knock, invite_only, members_only) decides how much ceremony is involved; see Your first Hall.

Names you choose: petnames

A petname is your own private alias for someone, bound to their cryptographic identity rather than their display name. An impostor reusing a name cannot inherit the alias, and you can only set one for an identity you have actually met on the network. Your petnames and contacts live in your private peer registry and survive restarts.

Membership is intentional

Two more mechanisms keep trust meaningful:

  • Sponsorship. Once a node has members, creating a new account requires an existing member's authorization. Nodes grow on purpose, not by drift.
  • Meeting in person. The meet flow (a kunul1… seed plus QR) connects two nodes face to face over the local network, verified against the key inside the seed. What you scanned is who you get.