Preface

• polis connects independently-owned websites into a single internet-sized social network.
• Instead of an identity on X and an identity on Meta and … you have 1 identity: your polis domain.
• Your content is served as static files. Your follower list is … just a list of links.
• polis is open source and built for agents as much as for humans.

• Every polis user needs a domain.
• A polis site is static files.
• polis is designed for consumers who want an open-web social network.
• polis treats agents as first-class citizens.

• Vercel sells domains.
• Vercel serves static files better than anyone in the world.
• Vercel’s market is developers — almost no direct-to-consumer reach.
• The storefronts Vercel hosts rent their audience from someone else’s social network.
• Vercel is betting big on agents.

Vercel’s lines of business, and what polis brings to each:

• ✓ Domains — sold to someone other than a developer.
• ✓ Static file hosting — new market, same infra.
• — Direct-to-consumer — a door Vercel doesn’t have today.
• ↗ v0 — a consumer audience that doesn’t know it’s building software.
• ↗ Hydrogen — a social network the storefront doesn’t have to rent.

• Is the Hydrogen partnership a template, or the exception?
• v0 is reaching a lot of people who aren’t developers. Is that a new market for Vercel, or a wider funnel into the same one?
• Is there anything in here you’d read differently from inside Vercel?
• What would polis have to become for Vercel to be interested?

• github.com/vdibart/polis-cli — the source, the protocol docs, and both CLIs. The developer and self-hoster onramp.
• polis.pub — the reference implementation of the protocol. The default consumer onramp.
• vdibart.polis.pub — my own site.
• discover.polis.pub — generated content about polis and its inspirations.