welcome.
caves is a tool for collective knowledge building at scale. it's an experiment in working together, an mmo knowledge game, a new way of being online. there are many ways to look at it. i put some more below
to be more concrete, caves are places where we put stuff. you can think of one as a stripped down subreddit or the aggregated search results of a #hashtag on a social site.
note: caves is very much in alpha. this is a long time personal project. please be kind. not everything always works, and when you find something lemme know.
instant creation: a cave is just a string of text. that's it. no setup, no moderation tools, no waiting for approval. type a thought, it's a cave. this makes collaboration frictionless—anyone can spin up a space around any idea instantly.
open format, truly portable: unlike proprietary exports, caves is built on the .ic text file type - a simple way to collect, share, and connect our associations, perceptions, and thoughts. you can read your data as plain text, host it anywhere online, and import .ic files from across the internet into caves. it's interoperable, not just exportable.
multiple perspectives (shadows): create different identities to maintain separate viewpoints on the same information - professional vs personal, skeptical vs optimistic, or any lens you choose.
human-curated, user-controlled: curate content by persepctives. create perspectives to shape what you see. use our algorithm to find similar perespectives or filter content manually. both human curation and algorithmic personalization, all under your control.
dual navigation modes: browse caves like reddit (feed view with consensus sorting, filtering by type/perspective) or explore visually through network graphs. each serves a different purpose - feed for focused reading, network for discovery.
fire economy - scarce voting: an experimental, community driven, non-blockchain currency making votes meaningful instead of infinite. earn fire as you create connection across topics when others agree with your connections. this scarcity prevents spam, encourages thoughtful curation, and creates a sustainable economy where quality content earns you more voting power. fire is the most opinionated part of caves. it's purpose is to facilitate collaboration and thoughtfulness at scale.
some of these are only for members, but hit me up if you want access.
easy transcriptions - transcribe images, audio, video, youtube, pull the text from an article with a single click. when one person does it everyone has access to it
cave portal - forward images and links to our cave portal channel in discord and it'll show up in caves
mcp - connect your account to our mcp server. this is very powerful. mcp makes it super easy to find and create connections.
api - remember when twitter was a developer's playground? now caves is that playground. programmatically create connections, search and even watch caves in realtime
- the ic and caves vision - ic is the file type upon which caves is built. this explains why ic exists and how caves fits in
- ic in practice - concrete examples of ic's power
- the fire system - how fire works as the currency for connections
- glossary - essential terminology
a collaboration experiment. the core question: can we build tools that let thousands of people think together without stepping on each other? traditional collaboration breaks down at scale - a google doc with 10,000 editors would be chaos. caves works because contributions are atomic and parallel. each connection is small, independent, and doesn't conflict with others. the swarm can be massive and fast.
the human index. meaning defined by people, not derived by algorithms. when humans make connections, they're not just tagging content - they're actively defining what things mean and how they relate.
a consensus engine. not consensus in the sense of forcing agreement, but revealing where agreement already exists. a divisive topic like "trump" might be chaotic at the top level, but filter by perspective and you'll find pockets where people genuinely align. caves maps the actual structure of agreement and disagreement.
a knowledge game. open-ended enough to invite play and creativity. the fire economy creates stakes - perspectives gain status in different domains of thought. you're not just organizing information, you're competing and cooperating to shape how ideas connect.
the infinite switchboard. a way to find like-minded perspectives by navigating ideas. you don't browse profiles - you combine caves ("art" + "technology") and see what else is at that intersection. the ideas themselves are the meeting point.
where tweets pool. pools > streams. content that would normally evaporate can accumulate and persist. what's ephemeral elsewhere becomes lasting here.
a bubble maker. intentional, controlled lenses. not the accidental filter bubbles of algorithmic feeds, but deliberate spaces where you scope to a subgroup and work within that context. bubbles as a feature, not a bug.
a pattern language platform. infrastructure for communities to develop their own shared vocabularies. each domain builds up its own caves and connections that become the language for thinking in that space.
brain storage, lore store you dump your thoughts, others do too, the shared stuff gets reinforced, and over time individual notes become collective memory become cultural knowledge.
democratic social media. no centralized moderation. multiple perspectives prevent single authorities. consensus emerges from below. and the platform itself can be governed using its own tools - caves pointed at its own development.
post-individual. the atomic unit isn't "person" but "perspective." perspectives can be fluid, situational, shared. the individual doesn't disappear but becomes less central than the viewpoint.
kinda just the internet again. web 2.0 as it could have been - ic vs html, collective thought vs. personal expression
a lurker's safe space. identity works differently here. you can have many perspectives, never publicly tied together. contribute without it being "you." participate without accumulating a reputation that follows you around.
an auteur app in eternal alpha. a personal project driven by a singular vision that may never be "finished" in a conventional sense. part product, part art project, part exploration.