Account

The Account screen is where the account lives, and a guest is where everybody starts. Writing needs no account: a guest keeps every book, setting and achievement on this device. What an account adds is the community layer and the copies in the cloud, and the screen says which of the two states this device is in the moment it opens.

Signing in and creating an account are one flow. Sign in takes an address, sends a six-digit code to it and takes the code back. The code lasts ten minutes and allows five wrong guesses. Nothing on the screen says whether the address already had an account, because the server does not say: if it had none, one is created by the same code. The work this device did as a guest is attached to the new account on the way through, so nothing local is lost or made again.

The session token is never in the page’s ordinary storage. It goes to this device’s secure store, the operating system’s own on the desktop and this page’s memory in a browser. Signing out takes it back and ends it on the server as well.

Email names the address the account answers to, and can be moved. Change address sends a code to the new address and a notice to the current one; confirming the code moves the address and ends every other session, leaving this one alone. An address another account holds is refused with that reason beside the field.

Licence says what has been bought and what the tier opens. A guest is no session; a free account is a session with no licence; a paid account is a session with one. The tier is read from the licence and nothing else, and it is what every locked control on every screen states its reason from. Open payment portal hands you the provider’s own page for the subscription, where it is changed or stopped.

Sync is the switch for the copies in the cloud. Book bytes go straight from this device to object storage over a signed link for exactly the size declared; they never pass the API. A server with no bucket says so rather than pretending: cloud sync is off on that server, which is about the server and never about you.

Sessions lists every device this account is signed in on. Each row carries its label and the day it was last seen, with this device marked. Sign out this session ends both of that row’s tokens at once, including for the row you are on. There is no place and no address in the list, because the server keeps neither.

Delete account is the one way back from an attestation, and it is final. It asks for the address typed back before the button opens, and for each published work whether it is removed or kept without an author. A work kept without an author keeps its text, its kudos and its lineage with your name cleared. The bucket is cleared, then every part, then the row. Books on this device stay as files and return to guest ownership.

Confirming the code of a new account opens Account details. That is where the username, the display name and the rest are chosen, and it is the next entry.

Try: open Account as a guest, sign in with an address, and read the line under the code field. It names the address and the ten minutes, and says nothing about whether that address was known here.