quite.spaceThe person chooses the action. quite.space chooses the network. There are no “send via relay” or “send over radio” buttons in the normal interface, and there will not be.
Three paths
| path | when it works | what it carries |
|---|---|---|
| Local network | you are on the same Wi-Fi | everything, fast |
| Relay | there is internet | everything |
| Radio | none of the above | text, reactions, service traffic — radio |
The node prefers the wider path and switches by itself. Switching creates nothing anew: a connection belongs to the space and the identity, not to the network it once arose in. No repeated invitations, no key changes, no questions to the person.
The status icon in the header shows the current path: Direct, Local network, Through a relay, Radio, Catching up, No connection right now.
A relay is mail, not a server
A relay accepts sealed packets and hands them to whoever comes for what is theirs. It is not a participant: it does not read the contents of private spaces, stores nothing past its deadline, and authorizes no one.
Settings → Relay:
- Automatic — the node measures the available relays itself and picks the best one, keeping the second as a spare. The Re-measure button re-measures on demand.
- Custom — only the relay you named. Automation is then switched off entirely.
On the first connection to your own relay the app shows its fingerprint and asks for confirmation. From then on it is pinned: a key change means a refusal and an explicit message, not a silent “connected to something else”.
Copy diagnostics gathers a local report with no secrets in it — handy for explaining what is going on without retelling it in your own words.
Below are the manual Push current space / Pull for all spaces for a
one-off exchange (before going offline, say) and the catalog address for
Discover.
Who can see what
Worth understanding precisely, because “encrypted” is too general a word.
A private space. The contents are sealed with epoch keys. The relay sees only encrypted packets and mailbox addresses; it cannot read them.
A public space. Its contents are signed plaintext — that is the point: anyone with the link must be able to read it. This is not a hole; it is the purpose.
Media. It does not sit on the relay as a file: text and descriptions travel on their own, and the bytes are pulled on demand when you open the card.
Radio. The very fact of an exchange on the air is visible to everyone in range — physics. The segment key protects the mechanism, not the correspondence (radio).
Media seeding. If you turned on “Share media you already have”, others learn that you have this file — and therefore that you read this. Which is why it is off by default and labelled exactly that way.
Honest states instead of checkmarks
Nowhere in quite.space does it say “delivered” where all that is known is “a relay accepted”. The list of phrasings and what stands behind each — talk.
A separate word on silence: silence is not a diagnosis. A correctly configured node with no one nearby looks exactly like a node configured wrong. That is why the interface says “could not confirm” rather than “not delivered” — they are different things.
Radio
A whole section of its own: radio — which hardware has been verified, how to flash a board, how to connect, what radio carries and what waits for a wider path.
Protocol-level changes per release are logged on protocol updates.