The Autonym project
Autonym is a draft open specification, with a reference implementation in development, for a personal context record the person owns. The aim is a standard that any host can implement and any compatible assistant or service can read, with the person deciding what is disclosed.
Why we are building it
We think "explain yourself once" is a reasonable thing to want, and that the current answer to it, a memory feature inside each vendor's product, is the wrong shape. It ties the person's context to the vendor. It is largely invisible to the person. It cannot be carried anywhere. A record that belongs to the person, with disclosure they control and a log they can read, is a better shape. It has to be a standard rather than a product, or it becomes one more silo.
What will be open
The planned licence split is Apache-2.0 for the specification, schema, SDKs, CLI and conformance tools, and AGPL-3.0 for the reference server and person's app. The repositories and working releases will be linked here as they become public.
Autonym is maintained by New Media Solutions Ltd. The aim is a specification that can support independent implementations, with a neutral home considered as the project develops.
Governance
Today the specification is maintained by New Media Solutions Ltd, a UK company. The intent is to move it to a neutral home once there is a second independent implementation. The constraints that make Autonym what it is are written into the specification so that they bind every implementation, including ours: no advertising identifiers, no correlation across recipients, no resale, consent and provenance in the schema.
How the project will be funded
The core hosted service will be free for people after beta, with optional paid extras. Paid features and prices will be published before they become available. We also plan commercial services for organisations that build on Autonym.
The contents of personal records will not be sold. Hosting and tooling are intended to fund the service while leaving people in control of their records.
Contributing
The repositories are not public yet, so there is nowhere to open an issue or a pull request against. Write to hello@autonym.dev in the meantime.
The intended terms are a Developer Certificate of Origin for the specification and the Apache-2.0 packages, and a contributor licence agreement for the server and app. They will be confirmed and published before contributions are accepted. Normative changes will need an issue first. The specification uses semantic versioning, and a named maintainer decides until the neutral home exists.
Roadmap
Now
Website implementation, draft design and partial specification. Published package names are reserved; the local launcher is a placeholder.
Next
Validate the disclosure compiler and grant model. Demonstrate a consented read and a visible log with a compatible assistant.
After that
Complete local mode, publish tested client instructions and invite independent review.
Later
Hosted beta, write review, imports, portability and service integrations. Family features, emergency cards and the trust registry follow their own release gates.
Who
Autonym is built by Matt Le Masurier, a UK technologist who has spent his career building video streaming platforms for broadcasters.
The name
An autonym is a name a person gives themselves. Autonym is the name of the specification, the code and the hosted service, and it appears in every handle, scope and media type. The wordmark is always lowercase.
Contact
hello@autonym.dev ·github.com/autonymproject ·@AutonymProject on X