The Ptah Protocol

Open infrastructure for creative authorship on the AT Protocol.

The Ptah Protocol is a set of Lexicon schemas for the AT Protocol network. Fifteen record types that handle attribution, lineage, permissions, and history for creative work — from albums and franchise universes to competitive tournaments and collaborative campaigns. Create a world. Track who contributed what. Trace every sample, adaptation, and remix back to its source. Accumulate history that's permanent and verifiable.

The namespace is world.ptah.*. Production schemas are live on the ATProto network.

Website: ptah.world · Account: @ptah.world · Contact: protocol@ptah.world

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Quick Start

You need an ATProto account. Find your DID:

https://bsky.social/xrpc/com.atproto.identity.resolveHandle?handle=YOUR_HANDLE

Declare participation (one record per account, fixed key self):

curl -X POST "https://YOUR_PDS/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.putRecord" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "repo": "YOUR_DID",
    "collection": "world.ptah.flax",
    "rkey": "self",
    "record": {
      "$type": "world.ptah.flax",
      "displayName": "Your Builder Name",
      "bio": "World-builder.",
      "createdAt": "2026-01-01T00:00:00Z"
    }
  }'

Then create a world, a character, a location, and an action. Full walkthrough in GETTING_STARTED.md.

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Documentation

• Getting Started — build your first world in five minutes
• Specification — field-level reference for every record type
• Examples — four complete world record chains (RENAISSANCE, MCU, Spades, tabletop RPG)
• Glossary — terms from protocol infrastructure, world-building, and competitive play
• Roadmap — where the protocol is and where it's going

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Record Types

The protocol defines fifteen record types plus a shared definitions file.

Record	Namespace	Purpose
World	world.ptah.world	The foundational record. Everything else references it. Declares name, creator, IP origin, governance, and rendering hints.
Character	world.ptah.character	A person, creature, or entity inside a world. The character is not the user — it's the world's inhabitant.
Template	world.ptah.template	A shared identity template. Iron Man is a Template; Tony Stark is a Character instance of it.
Action	world.ptah.action	The heartbeat of the protocol. Captures who acted, as which character, where, and what happened.
Event	world.ptah.event	A structured occurrence — competition, gathering, milestone, conflict. Witnesses are verifiable action records.
Log	world.ptah.log	The world's history book. Traces back to the actions and events that generated it. Attributable and permanent.
Origin	world.ptah.origin	The attribution and permission layer. Who contributed what, under what terms, with what role.
Location	world.ptah.location	A place inside a world. Nests infinitely via parent references with a depth index.
Collection	world.ptah.collection	Bundles multiple works together — album, anthology, season, curated set.
Cadence	world.ptah.cadence	Temporal orchestration. Controls when and how works surface: schedules, gated access, sequential unlocks.
Trace	world.ptah.trace	Lineage between works — cover, remix, adaptation, sample, sequel, fork. Includes clearance status.
Usage	world.ptah.usage	Terms and permissions. What's allowed, where, for how long, and under what conditions.
Version	world.ptah.version	Edit history within a work. Every version, every change, linked to its predecessor.
Flax	world.ptah.flax	Participation signal. One per account, fixed key self. Used by AppViews for discovery.
Defs	world.ptah.defs	Shared token definitions referenced across all record types.

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Design Principles

Attribution is infrastructure, not metadata. Every record carries a permanent link to its creator. The creator's DID is immutable — it doesn't change even if the record is contributed to, built on, or rendered a thousand different ways.

The protocol records; clients render. The schemas define the data. How that data is displayed — which canon tier to show, how to weight narrative significance, what visual style to use — belongs to the rendering layer. Multiple clients can read the same records and produce meaningfully different world experiences.

Witnessing is presence, not endorsement. A thousand witnesses do not make an event good. They make it witnessed. The distinction is preserved at every layer.

The log is rhetoric, not truth. The protocol makes narrative attributable and permanent. It does not make narrative true. Any log entry can be traced back to its sources, but the interpretation belongs to the author.

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Schema Design Decisions

• knownValues over enum everywhere. Fields use open-ended known value sets rather than closed enumerations, allowing extensibility without breaking changes.
• Consistent required fields. Core records require a creator DID, a world reference, and a creation timestamp. Most also require a name or title. Everything else is optional.
• Typed flexible properties. Freeform metadata uses named object definitions with explicit optional fields rather than untyped key-value pairs.
• String length limits. Names: 640 bytes / 64 graphemes. Descriptions: 10,240 bytes / 1,024 graphemes. Log content: 102,400 bytes / 10,000 graphemes.
• AT URI references throughout. All cross-record references use the at-uri format, making every relationship in the record chain resolvable on the network.

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Network Publication

Production schemas are published as com.atproto.lexicon.schema records in the @ptah.world repository under the world.ptah.* namespace. All fifteen schemas are live and resolvable on the ATProto network.

Lexicon resolution is wired via DNS TXT record:

• _lexicon.ptah.world → did=did:plc:l45z35sxxjuobp5q65a5vu22

DID: did:plc:l45z35sxxjuobp5q65a5vu22 PDS: Blacksky

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Intellectual Property Model

The protocol supports three source types for worlds and their contents:

• Original IP — created by the world originator, with full authorship control.
• Public Domain — derived from public domain source material, with the Template/Character instance split enabling multiple performances of shared identities.
• Collaborative Commons — created under a collaborative framework with shared governance.

The controlType field on characters (exclusive, open, contested) and the instancePolicy field on templates (open, restricted, closed) govern how creative control flows through the system.

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Repository Structure

ptah-protocol/
├── README.md
├── SPECIFICATION.md
├── GETTING_STARTED.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── examples/
│   ├── README.md
│   ├── renaissance.md
│   ├── mcu.md
│   ├── blacksky-spades.md
│   └── shattered-reach.md
├── GLOSSARY.md
├── ROADMAP.md
├── LICENSE
└── lexicons/
    ├── world.ptah.action.json
    ├── world.ptah.cadence.json
    ├── world.ptah.character.json
    ├── world.ptah.collection.json
    ├── world.ptah.defs.json
    ├── world.ptah.event.json
    ├── world.ptah.flax.json
    ├── world.ptah.location.json
    ├── world.ptah.log.json
    ├── world.ptah.origin.json
    ├── world.ptah.template.json
    ├── world.ptah.trace.json
    ├── world.ptah.usage.json
    ├── world.ptah.version.json
    └── world.ptah.world.json

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome — schema feedback, documentation fixes, example worlds, and tooling. See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to get started and what we accept.

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License

MIT OR Apache-2.0, at your discretion. Following the dual-license convention used by the AT Protocol reference implementation.

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About

The Ptah Protocol is created by R. Michael Thomas.

Named for Ptah, the Egyptian god of craftsmen and architects — the one who conceived the world in his heart and spoke it into existence. The protocol's three-letter hieroglyphic name maps to its architecture: 𓊪 (P) is the foundation layer, 𓏏 (T) is the record layer, 𓉔 (H) is the attribution chain.