Built together. Open to everyone.
An open protocol for private communication, governed by people.
Comutability is a community-led organisation. We are forming Secure Net, a protocol that lets people talk privately across sites anyone can run, into an open standard that no single company controls.
Three things, kept apart on purpose
An organisation, a protocol and the applications that use it. Each answers for something different, so no one of them can quietly take over the others.
The organisation
Comutability
Looks after the people, the process, the funding and the AI tools. It supports the work without owning the protocol.
The protocol
Secure Net
The shared foundation: identity, encryption and how sites talk to each other. It depends on no single application or host.
Built on the protocol
Applications
Commonveil is the first. Anyone may build another, and none of them, ours included, gets special treatment.
What Secure Net is for
Private conversations and communities that do not depend on one company staying honest, solvent or online.
Identity that belongs to you
Your account is a chain of keys you hold. A site can carry your messages, but it cannot pretend to be you.
End-to-end encryption
Messages are sealed on your device for the people you are writing to. The sites in between hold only scrambled text.
Sessions that resist a quantum computer
Two devices agree keys with an established method and a quantum-resistant one together, then keep changing them as they talk. A recording made today stays sealed, and a stolen key soon stops working.
Sites that talk to each other
Anyone can run a site. People on different sites can find each other and talk, and each site proves which site it is.
A sealed relay between sites
What one site sends another is sealed for that site alone, so nothing in between can see who is writing to whom.
Communities that outlive their host
A community keeps a signed history that approved sites can copy, so it can carry on if its home site goes away.
Not independently audited. One application uses it so far.
We are beginning to form a standard.
A protocol only one team can change is a product. From now on, changes to Secure Net are meant to go through public proposals, review and a recorded decision by people.
The process is a draft. The committee that will decide does not exist yet beyond the founder.
A public proposal
Anyone writes down the problem and the intended solution as a numbered Secure Net Improvement Proposal.
Examination(a decision for people)
Maintainers and independent developers look at security and at whether existing sites and applications keep working.
Working code and tests
A reference implementation and tests show the change does what it says. Without them it can be discussed, not accepted.
A recorded decision(a decision for people)
The Technical Steering Committee accepts or rejects it, and writes its reasons into the proposal.
Into a numbered version(a decision for people)
Only after the required review does it become part of a versioned specification. Accepting it does not deploy it anywhere.
AI helps with the work. People answer for it.
AI drafts, codes and tests. It does not vote, approve its own security changes or decide what is released. Every decision has a person you can name behind it.
To bring people together to create genuinely useful, accessible and open-source software, using artificial intelligence to support creativity, collaboration and development.
It all happens on GitHub
Code, specifications, proposals and decisions are public. You can read everything without an account.
Secure Net
The protocol: its specification, the reference library, its tests and its proposals.
Open Secure Net (on GitHub)Community
The Founding Charter, decision records, governance proposals and project briefs.
Open Community (on GitHub)Commonveil
The first application built on Secure Net: private messaging and communities, with a self-hosted server. From version 0.23 it can add Secure Net's quantum-resistant sessions to direct messages as an opt-in experiment, and it has a forum that follows each protocol proposal.
Open Commonveil (on GitHub)
You do not need to code to make this better.
Questions, research, writing, design, reviews and code all count. Pick what suits you and we will point you to the right place.
Showing next steps for: Suggest an idea
Suggest an idea
Describe a problem that you or other people have with software. Every project starts as a public conversation.
- Search the existing issues first, in case someone has already raised it.
- Open a new issue explaining the problem, who it affects and what you have already tried.
- Say why existing tools fall short. That helps people decide whether to build something new or improve something that exists.
You will need: A free GitHub account to open or comment on an issue. Reading needs no account. Issues and comments are public, so never share personal information.
Help keep the protocol open.
Financial support options are being prepared. Before any payment button appears, we will say who receives the money, what it pays for and on what terms. Paying will never buy a say over the protocol or the community.