Social
Daimond is changed by what its users report. The Social panel is where that is written, read back and voted on, and where messages, the people they come from, groups and shares sit. This page is about making a note land: how to say what happened, and the names for the parts of the screen, so that whoever reads it knows at once which thing you mean.
A note that says the thing at the top left is broken costs somebody a search, and sometimes finds the wrong thing. A note that says the Diamonds chip in the top bar does not. Neither note is more work to write. The difference is only knowing what the parts are called, which is what the rest of this page is for.
Writing a note that can be acted on
Three things, and the first is the one most often left out.
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Where it is
Name the part, and the region it sits in. The screen has four regions and about twenty kinds of part, and naming both makes almost anything unique: there are crosses all over Daimond, but only one closer on the Everything row.
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What you expected
Say what you thought would happen. This is the half a reader cannot guess, and it is often the whole report: a control that does exactly what it was built to do, and surprises people anyway, is a fault in the control and not in the people.
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What happened instead
What you saw, in the order you saw it. Not what you think caused it. A guess at the cause narrows the search, and a wrong guess narrows it away from the fault.
The X at the top left is broken.
The closer on the Everything row put the whole rail away. I expected it to close that row.
A few more things that save a reply.
- One note, one thing. Two faults in one note become one proposal that cannot be finished, because half of it is fixed and half is not.
- Say which build. The Version row in the admin panel names it, and hovering it gives the build id. A fault already fixed reads exactly like a fault nobody can reproduce.
- Say what you were doing. Even a short trail helps: which panel was open, whether you were on a phone, which palette you were wearing. A fault can be there on one palette, or one screen width, and nowhere else.
- Write it anyway. If you cannot name the part, describe it and say where it was on screen. An approximate note is worth far more than a note nobody writes.
Saying where: the four regions
Daimond has a top bar across the top, and under it three regions side by side: the rail on the left, the stage in the centre, and the dock on the right. Almost every note can start by naming one of those four. The interface tours them and says what each panel is for; this page is about the smaller parts inside them.
The parts, by name
Every word below is one Daimond already uses, in its own interface or in this guide. Each entry shows the real thing, cropped out of a running Daimond, so you can match what is in front of you against the picture and use the word with confidence.
The pictures were taken on one of the dark palettes. On yours the colours will differ, and on a phone some of these parts move; the names do not.
chip
A small rounded button that turns one thing on or off. The row of them across the top bar is the chip row, one chip per panel, filled in while that panel is open.
Chips are used elsewhere too: on a head, as above, on a tile, and in the rail as tags. Say which, and a chip is unambiguous.
Say: the Workspace chip in the chip row.
tile
One Diamond or one chat, as it appears in the rail. A tile carries its own name, its cog, its closer, and whatever else belongs to that one piece of work.
Say: the cog on a chat tile.
head
The strip that names a list or a panel and carries the buttons acting on the whole of it. Each list in the rail has one, and so does every panel.
Say: the plus on the Chats head.
closer
The cross that closes something. Daimond has one closer, drawn one way, on every panel, tile, dialog, menu, drawer and sheet.
It always closes the one thing it sits on and never anything larger, so naming what it sits on names the closer exactly.
Say: the closer on the Everything row.
cog
The settings button. Wherever a thing has settings of its own, they are behind a cog on that thing: on a tile, on the identity row, on a mailbox.
Say: the cog on the Diamond tile.
light
The round light beside a play and a pause, saying whether that part of Daimond is going to act on its own. Green for everything set up and running, amber for some of it held, red for none of it running — either held, or nothing set up in the first place. Hover it and it says which.
Every light in the app hangs off the one on the Everything row, which speaks for the lot.
Say: the light on the Everything row is amber.
divider
A line you can drag to give one list or one panel more room, and double-click to put back where it was. There are two in the rail: one between the Diamonds and the chats, one above the admin panel.
Say: the divider above the admin panel.
row
One line in a stack of them, answering one question. The admin panel is rows; so are the mailboxes, the folders, the devices and the files.
A row that can be acted on is a button, and it opens the thing it names.
Say: the Version row in the admin panel.
spend row
The three figures at the foot of the rail: this session, this week, this month. It hides itself while nothing has been spent.
Say: the week cell of the spend row.
composer
The box you type into, with the send button beside it. There is one, at the foot of the stage, and it talks to whatever is on the stage: a chat, or a Diamond's daimon.
Say: the send button on the composer.
face
A Diamond has two of them, and this switch chooses which one you are looking at: the Crystal, which is what the Diamond knows, and the Chat, which is how it came to know it.
Say: on the crystal face of a Diamond.
tag
A word you file a Diamond under. Tags sit on the tile as small chips, and the Filter by tag row above the list narrows it to the ones you pick.
Tags are yours alone: they never go to a model, and they never enter a crystal.
Say: the tag chips under Filter by tag.
dialog
A card that opens over the app and waits for an answer. Its title is on the same row as its closer, and Escape does what the closer does.
Say: the Delete button in a chat tile's dialog.
gallery
Every panel there is, searchable, grouped by region, each row saying whether that panel is open and carrying the pin that decides whether its chip sits in the top bar. It opens from the ⋯ chip at the end of the chip row.
Say: the pin on the Trash row of the gallery.
Go to box
The keyboard's way to anything: Ctrl K, or Cmd K on a Mac. It reaches every panel and every setting by typing, including the ones no chip is showing.
Say: typing a palette name into the Go to box.
sheet
On a phone, a panel rises over the chat as a sheet you can drag up and down. It has a grab bar at the top, a closer beside it, and the one box you ask about it in.
Say: the grab bar on the Workspace sheet.
drawer
On a phone, the rail slides in from the left as a drawer. It is the whole rail, so everything in it keeps its own name. The button that opens it is the three lines at the top left.
Say: the admin panel, down the drawer.
paperclip
Attaches what you are reading to what you are working on. It sits on every row of the Workspace panel and on the head of a document, and it is drawn only while there is something to attach to.
Say: the paperclip on a folder row.
A few more words the rest of the guide uses, with nothing to photograph: a panel is one of the things a region holds, each with a name of its own, from AI to Trash; a crystal is what a Diamond knows, kept as a document; a daimon is the agent that thinks for a Diamond; a worker is an agent a daimon sends off to do one job. Chats & Diamonds explains all four.
Two more belong to the Social panel, and neither can be photographed either. The forge is where the work on Daimond is tracked: a public repository, off this device, that a note you send arrives in as a proposal. Your voice is a secret line the forge makes for you, which it looks you up by, held encrypted on this device. The Social panel below is where both are used, and it is the only place in Daimond either word appears.
Where two words exist
A few things in Daimond genuinely answer to more than one name, usually because the app says one and this guide says the other. They are listed here so that nobody wastes a sentence apologising for using the wrong one. Both are understood, and a note that uses either is a good note.
- The centre region is the stage in this guide and Beside the chat in the panel gallery.
- The panel under the rail's lower divider is the admin panel everywhere a reader can see, and its own head reads Admin.
- The Ctrl K box calls itself Go to, and this guide has also called it the palette. Palette is also the word for the eleven colour schemes, so Go to box is the one to prefer.
- The button that opens the drawer on a phone says Menu, and what it opens is the rail.
If you find another, that is worth a note of its own. Two names for one thing is a small fault in the app, not in the person reporting it.
People, and the first exchange
Everything else on this page rests on one act: two people coming to hold each other's real keys. Nothing can be sealed to somebody Daimond has no key for, so until a code has been exchanged the People list says exactly that, and the message box says there is nobody to write to.
Two buttons sit above the list. Show my code puts your own code on screen: a small signed card carrying your key, the separate key a message to you is sealed with, and whatever name you have given yourself. It is drawn as a symbol for somebody else's camera, and repeated underneath as a line of text beginning DMND-ID1. for when there is no camera. Add somebody is the other half of the same act: this device's camera, and a box to paste a code into.
Read in the room, or read a number aloud
Both routes record the code. Only two things can raise a key to matched, and which of them is offered depends on how the code arrived rather than on what it says.
- This device's camera, in person. You read it off their screen, so there was no channel for anybody to get between you, and the row offers Mark matched now.
- Anything else — a paste, a link, a code somebody sent you — stays a new key, and the dialog says so as it arrives. Whatever handed it over could have substituted a key of its own and signed the result perfectly, so a card that checks out proves that the holder of that key composed it and nothing about who the holder is.
The way up from there is Compare safety numbers: sixty digits in twelve groups of five, the same on both sides, read to each other on a call or in person. The numbers match records it. They are different says that somebody is between you and that the key is not to be used. Reading the digits in a message proves nothing, because whatever could swap the keys could swap the message.
What a row says
Each person is a row: a name, a line under the name, and a fingerprint. Until the key is matched the name is drawn as the claim it is — calls themselves “Ada” — because a name is a thing its holder typed. Once it is matched, the person on the other end is known and the name may be their name.
The line under the name is the only place in Daimond a key's standing is drawn, and it is a line rather than a badge so that it cannot be read in one glance with anything else. It says one of five things: that this is a new key you have not matched; that it was matched in person, with the date; that it was matched by safety number, with the date; that it is a different key from the one you matched; or that it is blocked.
Block on any row stops that key at the relay: nothing more from them is carried, and they are told nothing about it. Unblock lifts it. Nothing in this list is edited or deleted: every card, every match and every block is appended to a record on this device, and the list is rebuilt from that record, with every signature checked again, each time it is drawn.
Private messages
A message is sealed on this device to a key the other person holds, and opened on theirs. Nothing in between can read it, and that includes us: the relay carries ciphertext and has no way to do anything else with it. What it does see is what routing needs — which account, when, and how many bytes — and that is worth saying rather than glossing over.
At the foot of the Messages view is the box you write in. Above it a picker names who it goes to: the people whose sealing key this device holds, and the groups you have joined. Under the picker one line says who can read what you are about to type, and it changes with the pick, because Private. Only you and the person you are writing to can read this. would be false over a group of twelve. Send privately sends it. A body longer than 8,192 characters is refused rather than cut, on the ground that half a message is not a shorter message.
Arriving
While the Messages view is open, Daimond holds a request open at the relay, so a message that lands is drawn without your pressing anything. With the panel shut, it is found when you next open it — and by the count.
The Social chip in the chip row carries a number, and the total across the app goes into the browser tab's title and onto the app's own icon where the platform draws one. It is a tally of what has arrived rather than a memory of what you have looked at, and this build has nothing that marks a message as read, so the number stands.
A first message from somebody you have not accepted does not go into the list. It waits above it, under Waiting for your answer, with their fingerprint and what they wrote, and three buttons:
- Accept takes it into the list, and their later messages go straight there.
- Ignore takes the row away. It writes nothing, and it tells them nothing — that is the whole of it, so that a sender can never tell an ignore from a silence.
- Block stops them at the relay, as the People row does.
What is said, and what is not promised
- Sent, never delivered. The relay answers a blocked delivery exactly as it answers one it took, deliberately, so that Block cannot be told from Ignore. So a group send says how many people it was sent to, and names anybody the relay would not take it for.
- A full mailbox is said so. A box holds five hundred uncollected messages; past that a message does not arrive, and the sender is told that rather than told it went.
- Thirty days, then the relay lets go. A message nobody collects is dropped after thirty days and the sender gets a notice for it, in its own section under the list. A message that expired leaves that notice behind rather than a gap, so a silence is never mistaken for nothing having been sent.
- Nothing is queued. A message that could not be sent has not been sent, and nothing tries again behind your back. The same rule the note box keeps.
- Your own devices see them. Messages, and a copy of what you send, travel with the encrypted parcel sync carries between your devices. On this device they are kept encrypted under your passphrase, so while Daimond is locked the list says so instead of showing an empty one.
Groups
A group is a group chat, and it sits at the foot of the Messages view rather than behind a chip of its own. There is no shared key: a message to a group is sealed once for each member, one lock per person inside the one envelope. Three things follow from that, and each is on screen where it matters, before a press rather than after it.
- Joining shows nothing earlier. The messages sent before you joined were never sealed to your key, so no device can open them for you.
- Taking somebody out takes nothing back. They keep every message already sent to them and receive nothing from then on, which is why the control reads Stop sending to and never remove.
- Closing is final, and it destroys nothing. Everybody keeps every message; nobody can write to it again. Daimond asks once before it happens, and closing has a heading of its own below.
To make one, name it and pick from the people you hold a card for; Make this group tells them, and says how many were told. Somebody with no card cannot be added, because there would be nothing to seal to them with. A group holds at most 255 people, and one message to a group is a separate delivery for each member, so a large group is slow and fills mailboxes long before that ceiling matters.
An invitation arrives under Group invitations, with Join and Not now. Messages sent to the group while you have not answered wait with the invitation: joining a group is what accepts the people in it.
Only the person who made a group can change who is in it or end it, because a group's name for itself is derived from their key and nobody else can write a membership list for it. Everybody else sees the roster with no buttons over it. A member has Leave this group, which is local, takes nothing away and tells nobody; the person who made the group cannot leave it, since the next list they write would name them again.
Closing a group
Closing is the creator's one act that cannot be undone. The button reads Close this group — not disband, and not delete, because nothing is destroyed by it.
A dialog asks once, headed Close this group for everybody?, and it says: “Closing a group closes it for everybody. Nobody can write to it again, you included; every message already sent stays where it is. It cannot be undone.” Under that it names the group, and the button that does it reads Close it for everybody. Dismiss the dialog and the group is exactly as it was.
What the press does is write a membership list naming nobody, and hand it to everybody who was in it. Every reader obeys it, so nothing more can be sent to that group by anybody, the person who closed it included, and no later list can reopen it. Nothing is deleted anywhere: every member keeps every message they already hold.
The Social panel
A note is written in the Social panel, which sits in the dock, beside your work, so that a note about what is on screen can be written without leaving it. Its head carries five chips, and one is filled while you are looking at it: Messages, People, Share, Proposals and Settings. It opens on Proposals, which is where a note is both written and read back.
The rest of this section is Proposals, which is about Daimond itself, and Settings, which holds your voice. The other three chips are about other people, and each has a section of its own below: People first, because nothing can be sent to anybody until a code has been exchanged.
A note you post does not stop at Oxedyne. It goes to the forge, the place where the work on Daimond is tracked, and it arrives there as a proposal anyone with that repository can read. The Proposals chip is that same forge, read back — which is why the box that writes a proposal and the list that shows them are the one view.
Your voice
Anything that leaves this device goes under a voice. A voice is a secret line the forge makes for you: it belongs to one person, and the forge looks you up by it. It is the whole of your identity there. No name, no handle and no address travels with what you write, and this browser is never told what your voice is called.
Your voice lives in the Settings chip. Getting one is a single tap: when you have no voice, Settings shows Get my voice. Press it, and Daimond has the forge make your voice for you and holds it here. There is nothing to find, ask for or paste. It is made once, so if you already have one on another device it syncs across rather than being made again — the panel says so, and it will arrive shortly.
Daimond holds your voice on this device, encrypted under your passphrase, and the gateway it passes through on its way out stores nothing. Forget it removes the copy on this device. If a voice was made on another device and never reaches this one, I lost my voice — re-issue makes a fresh one; that replaces the old voice everywhere and cannot be undone, so it asks first. And if the forge has already handed you a voice some other way, I already have a voice lets you paste it in instead of making a new one.
Without a voice, the panel does not offer Post, nor voting, nor a reply: a voice is the one thing nothing leaves this device without.
Writing one
At the top of the Proposals view is the note box. Write the three things from the top of this page into it: where it is, what you expected, what happened instead. The first line is the title and the rest is what happened; the sentence beside the buttons says so.
Below the box is a row headed What goes with it. It holds one line: the build, the language, the size of the window, whether you are on a phone, the palette you are wearing, and which panels are open. That is the fourth piece of advice above, gathered for you rather than asked of you, and it is shown in the exact characters it will travel as. The row has a closer, and closing it takes the line off the note as well as off the screen.
Then two buttons, and the difference between them is whether the model rewrites the note first.
A note leaves this device only by becoming a proposal, and then it is gone from here: the forge holds it now, and there is no second copy and no list of old notes to keep. Until it goes, a waiting note can be sent by hand, copied or deleted — a note is only on this device, so deleting it asks first.
Reading the proposals, and voting
A proposal is one change to Daimond, stated so that it can be agreed or disagreed with, and so that it can be finished. Posting a note opens one: its first line becomes the title and the rest becomes the body. That is why the advice at the top of this page says one note, one thing: two faults in one note become one proposal that cannot be finished.
Under the Proposals chip each one is a row of the same shape as a row in the admin panel: a coloured dot for what state it is in, its title, and, where there are counts, how many have asked for it. Pressing the row opens it, and inside are the proposal in full, who wrote it and when, how many replies it has, the build it was written on, and the mark that closed it if one has.
Under that is a box to say something back. Write in it and press Say it, and what is sent is exactly what is in that box, the same promise the note box keeps. What has already been said sits above it.
Where the forge is keeping counts, two buttons sit with them: Do this and Not this. Pressing the one you already chose takes your vote back off.
There are four states. Open and Being done say where it stands, Done says it is finished, and Declined says it will not be done. A proposal that simply vanished would teach people not to write notes, so none of them does.
Nothing tells you when your proposal is answered. There is no feed, no badge and no message: you find out by opening the panel and reading it. The line above the list says so, so that a silence is never taken for an answer.