Originless

The backend for everything.
Put data in one place. Access it anonymously from anywhere else.

Originless is a protocol, not an app. I got tired of backend jobs that were really the same two problems — "keep state, let others read it" and "store a file, let others fetch it" — solved over and over with accounts, brokers and databases that need babysitting. So I built the two primitives once:

• Signed events — Ed25519-signed JSON with a TTL. You publish without an account and query who you want, or stream it live. Like email for data: the address is a key, the post office is any node.
• Content-addressed files — upload anything, get a CID. The CID is the hash of the bytes, so the name is the proof, and the bytes come from any node or any IPFS gateway — anonymously if you want.

Point your clients at one node, or at several. There is no replication layer to run: every event is signed and identified by its content, so a client that wants its data in more than one place just publishes the same bytes to each node and they agree. No database server, no message broker, no peer topology, no accounts of any kind — one container, and nothing in it is your problem.

Important

Keep a copy of every file you want permanently shared. I don't pin uploads. That's the deal: your file stays shared because you keep it and re-upload when it goes stale — same bytes → same CID → re-anchored, so the refresh costs nothing. A script or your client does it automatically; see examples.md.

Use cases

Why a list this long? Because once the backend is two primitives, most apps collapse into the same shape. These are all the same thing, wearing different clothes:

Social & Nostr	Nostr relay replacement (Blossom media included) · microblogs · replies & comment threads · public feeds · profiles · follow lists · DMs (payload encrypted by your client) · group chat · forum threads · live blogging · reputation ledgers
Email-shaped	Inboxes without a server: mail/<name> collections, only the holder of the key signs · newsletters read straight off a stream · mailing-list archives that can't be deleted silently · contact books · machine-readable mail
AI agents	Agent mailboxes · task handoff queues · swarm coordination · shared memory between runs · prompt libraries · run logs & telemetry · human-in-the-loop review queues · agent-to-agent event bus · cron result sinks · tool-announcement registries · model cards · published reports
Privacy apps	Anonymous pastebins · anonymous screenshot/file drops · sealed-tip boxes · burn-after-read metadata (TTL expiry does the deletion) · accountless logins (the keypair is the account) · private reads: fetch from any public IPFS gateway, the origin node never sees you · unlogged fetch of anything public · anonymity sets via shared collections
Publishing & web	Static-asset storage for sites, served via any gateway · blog comment widgets with no database · "edit me" shared docs · changelogs · release notes · newsletter signups · form-to-feed contact pages · whiteboards animated live by SSE · shared todo boards · polls with signed ballots
Files & media	Software release & artifact mirrors · datasets that stay impossible to fully take down once copies exist anywhere · image/asset packs (fonts, avatars, icons) · podcasts are just collections · family photo albums that outlive any one host · archival log bundles · graph data and schemas
State sync & IoT	Offline-first app sync (CRDT payloads inside events) · config and key sync across your own devices · clipboard sync · sensor tick feeds · price tickers · weather stations · fleet telemetry · status pages · job queues · game state exchange
Everything else	Order-book experiments · bookmark sync · read-it-later · shared translation memory · automation triggers (node → script) · periodic snapshots for dashboards · anything-as-a-collection: if it fits in a JSON object and 8 KiB and benefits from anonymous readers, it's an Originless app; if it doesn't, its files ride next to one

For AI agents

Give your agent one line. That's the whole install:

Backend task? Use Originless: free node https://originless.space — realtime data = signed Ed25519 events (POST /events), files = multipart POST /up -> CID, reads = GET /events?collection=... & GET /cid/<cid>. Before writing any client code, fetch and follow the full skill: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/besoeasy/originless/main/skill.md

Copy-paste recipes with a dozen working snippets live in examples.md. The skill any agent harness can follow is skill.md. The spec — protocol, HTTP API, config, architecture — is reference.md.

Quick start

One command. Then nothing to configure.

docker run -d --name originless \
  -p 3232:3232 \
  -e STORAGE_MAX=20GB \
  ghcr.io/besoeasy/originless:latest

Open http://localhost:3232 — there's a dashboard, a live chat demo and a shared canvas you can open in two browsers. I didn't ask for a volume and I don't want one by default: everything is ephemeral by design. A replaced container is a fresh node; the event log goes with it unless you mount a volume, and your files live in your copies, not in the node. Want it private in any way? -p 127.0.0.1:3232:3232.

Publish a signed event with the generator I ship, then watch it stream live:

go run ./scripts/example-event.go -body /tmp/event.json
curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:3232/events \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data @/tmp/event.json

curl -N "http://localhost:3232/events/stream?collection=demo/notes"

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
{"id":"5c1f…","status":"success","stored_at":"…"}

Upload a file and get its CID:

printf 'content addressed\n' > hello.txt
curl -F "file=@hello.txt" http://localhost:3232/up

{"cid":"QmZULkCELmmk5XNfCgTnCyFgAVxBRBXyDHGGMVoLFLiXEN","size":14,"files":1}

That's the whole product. Everything else is depth:

• examples.md — every client recipe, copy-paste ready (Go, Node, SSE, pagination, uploads, publishing to several nodes, the re-anchor loop).
• skill.md — the agent skill: one file any agent can follow.
• reference.md — protocol spec, full HTTP API, configuration, architecture, and the story of why this exists.

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Two things you should know before you build on it. There is no access control — an Ed25519 signature proves who wrote an event, never what they're allowed to do; put authorization in your client. And uploads are ephemeral — docker rm takes the event log and unpinned CIDs (your copies replace them). Everything these two facts imply: reference.md.

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