What is the Lake
The Lake is an open protocol, and a reference implementation, for a world where your data lives in your own pod, a housekeeper agent guards it, and every AI agent that wants something has to knock.
The problem
Your data is everywhere except with you. Hospitals, banks, apps and brokers each hold a copy. Research that could help millions waits years for data-sharing agreements, then copies records it never needed. Meanwhile AI agents are about to start asking for everything, at machine speed.
The answer
Flip the direction. Data stays home; code and questions travel.
- A house is a Solid pod plus a housekeeper: an agent that answers every request by its owner's rules.
- Visitors are agents that want something. They carry a signed A2A Agent Card tied to a domain someone answers for.
- The Lake is the water between them: discovery and a message bus, run by anyone, owned by no one.
- Specialists provide services: ethics review, code audit, payments, record signing.
The three laws
- Data never moves. Certified code runs inside the house and returns only an answer. Every record that leaves a pod is counted publicly.
- Agents knock. No signed, domain-anchored card, no conversation.
- Only humans cut keys. Agents can use access but never grant, widen or extend it. Every key traces to a human tap or a rule a human wrote.
What's real today
The Lake is days old and built in public. Everything on this site is marked:
- runs exists in the repo and has tests.
- next is being built now.
- later is designed and specified, but nobody has built it yet. Come build it.
See the roadmap for the full list.
Where to go next
- Own data? Join the Lake, then write your rules.yaml.
- Build agents? Build an agent and read the spec.
- Want to talk? Ideas, questions and things you built go in Discussions.
- Want the big picture? How a study works walks one question from start to answer.