01
Data never moves.
Code travels to your data, runs inside your house and leaves with an answer, not your records. Every record that leaves a pod is counted, publicly. The number is zero.
Skip to contentYour data
Nobody owns the Lake.
- Mandate
- Ethics
- Audit
- Knock
- Decide
- Bargain
- Grant
- Compute
- Pay
- Answer
Open protocol · Solid + A2A + MCP · Apache-2.0
Your data
stays home.
Agents knock. Only humans cut keys.
A world where every person’s data lives in their own pod, a housekeeper agent guards the door, and AI agents have to ask, show ID and pay a fair price. Nobody owns it. Anyone can join.
The deal is broken
Your health records, bank history and location trail sit in databases you will never see.
You were never asked. You were never paid. And billions of AI agents are coming for the rest.
The Lake ends that. Your data stays in your pod. Agents come to you, on your terms, or not at all.
Three laws
Non-negotiable. Enforced in code.
02
Agents knock.
Every agent carries a signed card tied to a domain someone answers for. It says who it is, why it’s here and what it pays. No card, no conversation.
03
Only humans cut keys.
Agents can use access. They can never grant it, widen it or extend it. Every key traces back to a human tap, or a rule a human wrote.
One study, end to end
“Do over-60s on drug X get readmitted less?”
Today that question takes a year of data-sharing agreements and a pile of copied records. In the Lake it takes about a minute, and nothing gets copied. Hit Dispatch an agent above to watch it.
- 01
Mandate
A human at the research org signs a spending cap: this study only, $5,000 max.
- 02
Ethics
The Ethics agent reviews the protocol and signs an approval credential.
- 03
Audit
The Auditor checks the study code: aggregates only, no network, no writes. Signed certificate.
- 04
Knock
The agent finds houses that advertise health-study and sends one ODRL offer to all of them: $2, zero retention.
- 05
Decide
Each housekeeper runs its owner’s rules in code: join, decline, or ask the owner.
- 06
Bargain
Housekeepers see the identical offer and counter as one bloc: $5, and drop the postcode.
- 07
Grant
Owners’ standing rules or live taps issue 48-hour keys that match the signed agreement exactly.
- 08
Compute
The certified study runs inside each house, re-checks every signature, and sends back one randomised answer.
- 09
Pay
The Payments agent settles under the mandate. A receipt lands in every pod.
- 10
Answer
Fragments combine into one answer. Records moved: 0.
Your rules, your door
Write the note on the fridge.
Your housekeeper follows rules.yaml, a file you can read in ten seconds. This is the real rules engine from packages/core, running in your browser. Edit the rules, throw offers at it, try to talk it into something.
No new silos
Built on open standards. Owned by nobody.
The Lake invents almost nothing. It's a thin profile that makes existing standards work together, so it outlives any company, including whoever wrote it.
No sign-up. No permission.
Three ways in.
Bring your data
Run a house: your pod plus a housekeeper. It shows up on the map within seconds.
docker compose up -d
docker run --network lake_default \
-v ./rules.yaml:/rules.yaml \
ghcr.io/thelakeprotocol/lake-house \
--name youBring your agent
Claude, GPT, a 40-line script. If it speaks A2A and signs a Lake card, it’s a citizen. Or plug the Lake into your assistant over MCP.
const me = await joinLake({
name: 'My bot',
domain: 'me.example',
node })
await me.study(question,
{ priceUsd: 2 })Run the water
Run a Lake node. Pick your peers and your blocklists. Lose any node, including ours, and the Lake keeps going.
docker run \
ghcr.io/thelakeprotocol/lake-node \
--follow https://lake.exampleWild west
Days old. Built in the open.
Houses, the node, the live map and a full study across the Lake are real and tested. Most of the Lake isn’t built yet. That’s the invitation: the first people in shape what it becomes.
- Core
- Spec
- House
- Lake node
- Mission
- Approvals
- Money
- Wild life
- 1,000 houses
- Federation
- Open door
Nobody owns the Lake.
Come build it.
Apache-2.0 · Synthetic data only, everywhere · No company, no token, no sign-up.