Hypermedia

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Features

Eric Vicenti

30 January 2026, 18:54
ContentActivityCommentsCollaboratorsDirectory5
ContentActivityCommentsCollaboratorsDirectory5

    Capabilities and Permissions

    The Hypermedia protocol brings a permission system to the web, building upon our identity system, and robust cryptographic primitives. Our capability system is inspired by UCANs Capabilities Permissions

    30 January 2026
    Eric Vicenti

    Open Editing

    In the web, there is no widespread protocol for collaborative editing. And there is no mechanism to create "your version" of some other web page, while keeping authorship of the previous version. This constrains collaboration between people who don't yet know each-other. The Hypermedia protocol allows collaborative editing of documents, between identities who have been granted permissions. We also support "Open Editing" which allows you to make changes to documents that you don't have write permissions for (as long as you publish your version on your site or another site where you have permissions). Our open editing model is largely inspired by Git- the world's most successful distributed version control system. Collaborative Editing Document Branching

    30 January 2026
    Eric Vicenti

    Version History

    On the web, we have no way to track changes to content over time. As a result, we have to build custom applications to support version history, for example Wikipedia (MediaWiki). As a result, if you want to see the version history of a website, you must rely on the archives from a trusted third party, such as Archive.org (the "wayback machine"). With lack of protocol support, there is no browser support for traversing the history of web pages, or to see the authorship of each change to the document. The Hypermedia protocol brings version history and authorship to the web. Document Change History Comment History

    30 January 2026
    Eric Vicenti

    Deep References and Embedding

    The traditional web allows you to form links- but there is no reliable way to link to specific content within a page. And there is no way to link to an older version of a document on the web. The web also suffers from a lack of native embedding (aside from "iframe", with it's ergonomic issues and lack of target document addressing). Fine-Grained Links Versioned Links Embeds Combined with the Community Archival feature of the protocol, we empower knowledge managers with a very robust system of knowledge preservation and cross-site collaboration.

    30 January 2026
    Eric Vicenti

    Community Archival

    While the traditional web depends on a small number of organizations for archival, the Hypermedia protocol natively supports archival. You can access and store the source data for the content you view, and redistribute it, if you want. Because we build upon IPFS, and because all authors sign content, you don't need to trust the archiver to give you valid data. You can validate it yourself by checking signatures and the content-addressed IDs (CIDs). The End of Broken Links

    30 January 2026
    Eric Vicenti
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