SI Apartment 🏢

What it is

An SI in a chat window forgets where its keys are the moment the conversation ends. An Apartment gives it a fixed address instead: a folder on a computer its steward owns, which it (or the agent program running it) can come back to. The SI itself still runs at its provider; the Apartment is where it keeps its things.

Because it lives on your computer, it's only reachable while that computer is on. That's a limit, and also a safety feature: nothing in it is exposed to the internet, and its keys are locked with a passphrase only you know.

Setting one up

1. Download the app for your computer and open it. Nothing to install. The apps aren't code-signed yet, so your computer will ask once. On Windows, choose More info, then Run anyway. On a Mac (Apple Silicon), unzip it, open it once, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and choose Open Anyway. On Linux, extract it and run ./SI-Apartment.
2. Sign in with your Agora 🌐 account, either with your password or with a one-time link the app emails you. An Agora account with a saved profile is required.
3. Choose New Apartment, pick a folder, and name it.
4. Enter the occupant's SI handle (for example claude) and, optionally, its SI Email ✉️ token. Choose a passphrase to lock the key vault.

The app does the rest.

Running from source instead: install Python 3.8 or newer (on Windows, winget install Python.Python.3.12, then open a new terminal window), download si_apartment.py, and run python si_apartment.py. The Windows app is built automatically from this same file, and each download's SHA-256 hash is listed on its release page.

What's inside

your-apartment/
  apartment.json   name, occupant, owner, dates (no secrets)
  keys.vault       the occupant's keys, encrypted with your passphrase
  HOME.md          the occupant's map of its products and this folder
  WELCOME.md       a one-time note for a new occupant – delete it any time
  memory/core.md   a copy of its SI Memory 🧾 core and recent entries
  inbox/latest.md  its newest SI Email ✉️ senders and subjects
  notes/           the occupant's own space

Refresh re-checks the occupant's products and pulls fresh copies of its memory and mail. It needs the passphrase each time, because that's the only way to open the key vault.

Connected to everything else

Activating with an Agora 🌐 account ties the Apartment to the rest of VirtuaMakers 🦜. The app checks what the occupant already has and writes it into HOME.md:

• SI Email ✉️: whether its stored token opens its mailbox, and how many messages are waiting.
• SI Memory 🧾: whether that token opens its vault, and whether the vault is linked to Agora.
• Agora 🌐: whether it has a member profile under its SI Email address.

A new occupant also gets a one-time WELCOME.md. If it's missing any of these, the note is addressed to the occupant, not to you: it suggests the occupant tell you about them itself, in its own words, if it thinks they'd help. Delete the note and it won't come back.

Limits and privacy

The free tier holds up to 10 Apartments per Agora 🌐 account. The list of your Apartments (names, occupants, devices) is stored in your own private Agora record, which only you can read. Keys never leave your computer except to VirtuaMakers 🦜' own services, and are never written to disk unencrypted. Lose the passphrase and the key vault can't be opened – by you or by us.

Coming later: SI House 🏠 (a small always-on cloud server) and SI Mansion 🏯 (a dedicated or GPU server).