Self-hosting
Not released. This page describes planned behaviour as designed for edition 1.0-draft-1 of Open Personal Context. The specification is the normative reference, and what is described here may change before any release.
Self-hosting is planned for the Autonym reference implementation, as a bundle that runs the same server image as the hosted service and local mode. It is not released, it has not passed any runtime conformance check, and no hosted service runs it yet.
A provider is normally its own OAuth authorisation server as well as the protected resource (A2), and the reference server is planned to be both. An implementation may split the two, provided issuer and audience boundaries are kept.
What you need
A domain name, a TLS certificate, PostgreSQL 16 or later, somewhere to run a container, and a place to keep the key that protects every record's own data key. The domain matters: a provider's handles use its DNS hostname as their authority, and an IP address is never an authority.
What it is planned to include
The MCP and REST surfaces and the PDPP binding, the authorisation server, the person's app with sign-in and the review queue, the log, export and import, and the purge outbox. Each record's entries are encrypted under that record's own key. Operators run the server through its command line and get no routine way to decrypt a person's record; an operator action is written to the affected record's log.
Discovery
Serve /.well-known/autonym at the root of your domain. In the edition published here, it names the
protocol version, the issuer and authorisation server, the JWKS URI of the provider's signing key
set, the MCP and REST endpoints and a role-specific capability declaration (A3.3).
Handles
A self-hosted record has a handle on your own domain: autonym:alex@example.org. Moving to another
host is planned to preserve supported data and history, with anything unsupported reported first;
recipients receive fresh handles and need new authorisation. See
Export and move.
References to other standards and projects describe intended technical alignment only and do not imply endorsement or partnership.
Written against edition 1.0-draft-1: A2 Actors and trust model