Help & documentation

Using Parable

Parable opens into your notes. Choose New note to begin, use the search field to find words across titles and bodies, and select a tag to narrow the list. Parable also keeps an encrypted copy of your unsaved writing on this device only, for up to 24 hours. After a reload or browser restart it offers to save that copy, but saving the note is what keeps it.

1. Identity as architecture

Every Parable account has a public decentralised identifier, or DID, linked to its signing-key history. A 24-word recovery phrase controls recovery; keep the current recovery phrase safe after a key change. Google or Microsoft sign-in helps locate an account but cannot decrypt its notes or replace missing recovery material. Local unlock uses a supported passkey or the passphrase chosen during setup. Browser signing uses NIST FIPS 204 ML-DSA-65 ; key encapsulation uses NIST FIPS 203 ML-KEM-768 . These are software keys, not a claim of hardware-bound signing.

The account DID is derived from the public signing key rather than an email address. Protected protocol mutations use ML-DSA-65 assertions or signed records where their route contract requires them; public reads, OAuth, health checks and every response are not universally signed. A verifier who has the evidence and public key can check whether that key signed the record. That does not by itself establish a person's legal identity, authorship, ownership, truth, or an independently witnessed time. Signing happens in your browser rather than on dedicated hardware — see how Ma’atara secures your connection ↗ for what that trade-off actually means.

2. The Notes app

The Notes app is the everyday face of Parable. It looks like a familiar private notebook with plain-text notes, attachments and version history — but underneath, every note is a signed object in your personal chain. The mechanics:

• On-device editor. The note title, body, tags, attachment names/types and plaintext hashes stay inside a DID-bound AES-256-GCM envelope. The normal sync path sends ciphertext, an opaque SHA3-384 envelope commitment, attachment ciphertext hashes, public identity material and operational timestamps—not readable note metadata.
• Version history. Each save is a new signed block referencing the previous one. You can browse the saved versions available for a note and open a read-only preview. The service-recorded time is not an independent timestamp.
• Attachment integrity. Parable encrypts note files for normal sync and records opaque ciphertext hashes used to detect a changed payload before opening it. The file name, type, plaintext hash and decryption IV remain inside the encrypted note envelope.
• Optional content checks. Choose Let others check this content later on a note to add a one-way matching record to the public provenance index. This check does not publish the note itself; normal Notes sync uploads an encrypted copy. Fingerprints still carry matching and privacy risk. See How Ma’atara Provenance protects your notes ↗.
• AI chat exception. Where the Notes product offers an AI chat action, it is a Notes-app feature, not part of the Ma’atara protocol or the Veritas canonical architecture. The prompt and selected context are an explicit plaintext egress to the selected model provider; this is separate from encrypted Notes sync. The product may record a SHA3-384 commitment and limited metadata, but a chat turn is not automatically a durable Veritas evidence record.
• Cross-device. Open Settings → Devices and follow the options shown for your identity. Portal-authorized browsers can use their own device keys to access Notes. A locally held root identity also has recovery and trusted-browser transfer options; that transfer grants the whole identity, not just a session. Compare both screens and approve only a browser you control. Availability depends on the identity and enabled service capabilities.
• Removing a device. Portal-issued device keys are revoked at Ma'atara ID. For older browsers holding the whole identity, removal relies on the browser reconnecting and honoring the signed removal. Neither action erases plaintext already copied. If key material may have been copied, review Account security. Key replacement has approval and activation steps; it is not an immediate remote wipe.
• Prepare for recovery. Keep your current recovery phrase and check recovery setup on a working device before clearing browser data. Completed setup can recover encrypted settings and covered note history. Older accounts may need an upgrade first; missing historical keys cannot be recreated. Keep a readable export as well.
• Older accounts and history. The temporary account-healing service is retired, and older note formats are not automatically converted. A fresh browser also lacks the local checkpoint used to detect an older server history; it cannot independently confirm freshness.
• Export a copy. In Settings → Recovery, choose a readable export or an encrypted backup. Keep all archive parts and the JSON manifest, and check export-report.json for gaps. Readable exports contain plaintext; encrypted backups need your keys.
• What an export covers. Chain records, current notes and their referenced attachments are included, but not every historical note-version object. Let an export finish before editing notes or closing the page; it cannot resume after a reload.

3. Veritas — your personal chain

Veritas is the per-user, append-only history for supported signed actions, including note saves and identity changes. Signed records make changes detectable when checked with the relevant public keys and history; they do not guarantee that every attempted action was saved.

Open the History page to browse recorded changes. If history is still indexing, wait for it to finish before treating the list as complete. The service stores encrypted objects and signed records, along with identifiers and timing metadata. Encryption protects your note content; access to stored history still depends on the service.

A signed record shows what a key signed. It does not prove who wrote the content or when it existed independently of the service. Keep your own exports when you need a portable copy.

4. Ma’atara Provenance — public provenance fabric

Ma’atara Provenance is the public side of provenance. Where Veritas is your private ledger, Ma’atara Provenance is the global, queryable index where you can register derived fingerprints so another party can compare content and verify a signed provenance claim. The claim is evidence of a key's assertion, not standalone proof of authorship.

Supported content checks compute fingerprints on your device and compare them with registered records. Supported formats and matching behavior vary; an edited or partial copy may not match, and a match needs review. This is not guaranteed detection of copying or proof of originality. These measurements are one-way and are not designed to reconstruct the source, but they are not anonymous either: they can be compared against material someone already holds, and should not be treated as zero-knowledge disclosures. You can register, query and verify against Ma’atara Provenance from Detect ↗ and Verify ↗, and the explainer for what leaves your device is at What leaves your device ↗.

5. AI consent Coming soon

Modern AI systems are trained on the open web — usually without asking the people who wrote it. Parable will let you attach a machine-readable consent statement to any content you publish, following the IETF AI-Pref Internet-Draft, and sign it under your DID so a verifier can attribute the statement to that key. The draft does not make crawlers enforce the preference.

The consent worker (consent.ma-atara.io) stores a SHA3-384-keyed record of your preferences (training, fine-tuning, retrieval-augmented use, derivative works, attribution requirements) and serves them under the canonical AI-Pref endpoint. Crawlers and model providers can choose to resolve a content URL → AI-Pref policy → signed statement over HTTPS. Support and enforcement depend on each recipient. A public preview is wired up at Ma’atara Provenance consent page ↗; additional publisher tools are not promised by this page.

6. Privacy & the keyed email linkage

Account linkage helps you find an existing identity after signing in on another browser. It is account-related data and can link sign-ins to your public identity.

When you sign in with Google or Microsoft, the authentication service processes the verified email address and creates a server-keyed account index rather than retaining the full address in that index. Redacted account-choice and security records remain linkable data.

This is a privacy-preserving keyed index, not a zero-knowledge proof:

• A database-only attacker cannot directly recompute candidates without the HMAC secret. An attacker who also obtains that secret can test likely email addresses, so secret custody, rotation and access control remain material.
• The index helps answer "have we seen this email before?" — by hashing the new sign-in with the same secret and checking for a match. Linked identity records can then support account selection.
• Audit rows can retain a shortened account handle plus a redacted display form (r***s@gmail.com) so operators can investigate abuse with reduced exposure. Redacted values and truncated hashes are still account-related data, not anonymity.
• Your DID and public keys are necessarily sent to protocol services. The current browser implementation keeps the recovery phrase, passkey private credential and ML-DSA secret material local; the normal Notes sync path sends encrypted note data rather than plaintext. Separate export, support and AI features require their own disclosed data-flow review.

Parable also uses optional, content-free product usage statistics through Cloudflare to improve journeys. The service receives a short-lived tab identifier, coarse route and action categories, and engagement signals; it never receives note text, recovery phrases, private keys or attachment contents. These records are retained for up to 30 days, and Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals are honoured.

This linkage is what powers the "Welcome back" chooser: when a known email signs in on a wiped device, we can offer to restore their existing DIDs from their recovery phrase instead of silently minting a new orphan identity. Sign-in alone does not restore decryption keys.

7. The provenance packages

Under the hood Parable is composed of a small number of focused services, each with a single responsibility and a clear cryptographic contract:

These services are deployed on Cloudflare Workers, but their route contracts are not identical. Protected mutations use ML-DSA-65 assertions or signed objects where documented; public reads, health requests and responses are not universally signed. A separate Rust workspace compiles the post-quantum primitives to WebAssembly so the same code paths run on the edge and in your browser.

8. Developer endpoints

For a button that opens a blank note, use the integration guide. It does not grant access to an account or automatically save content. Service integrations need a separate review of supported authentication, custody and endpoint contracts. The technical service monitor reports service status; a healthy response does not establish recovery readiness or independent security assurance.

9. Who we build for

Ma'atara is a protocol, not a product — and we're actively looking for partners and integrators to put it under their own workflows. If you recognise your work in any of the patterns below, we'd like to talk. We're committed to re-grounding the trust axis of digital life: who made this, when, and under what consent. Everything else follows from that.

Creators & journalists

Create signed evidence that a key committed to a photograph, article or draft at the service-recorded time without uploading the original content in that workflow. Public-chain anchoring is not yet running, so the timestamp is not independently witnessed. Built for breaking news, manuscripts and evidentiary photography, where the priority order is first, intact, attributable.

Enterprises & regulated industries

Post-quantum signing for documents, model artefacts, software releases and audit trails, with hardware-rooted profiles remaining roadmap work. Veritas chains give you a tamper-evident internal ledger; Ma’atara Provenance lets you publish only the fingerprints external auditors need. Designed to drop in alongside existing SIEM, HSM and compliance pipelines rather than replace them.

Research & integrity

The replication crisis is, at heart, a provenance problem: methods, parameters and datasets that cannot be reconstructed from what was published. Parable lets researchers pre-register hypotheses, sign the full methodology and pin the dataset fingerprint with an ML-DSA-65 signature and service-recorded time. That is tamper-evident evidence, not an independent timestamp or proof that the method was followed. We see replicable research and reproducible method as a critical frontier and are actively shaping integrations for that work.

AI labs & model providers

Resolve a published IETF AI-Pref draft preference for content you crawl, with a signed statement you can retain in a training-set manifest. Adoption and enforcement remain voluntary. Good-faith consent handling without re-implementing crawl infrastructure — and a clean audit trail when the regulator asks how you knew.

Regulators & platforms

Verify signatures and compare provenance signals against a public index without the original content being stored by that registration workflow. This can support an authorship assessment but does not prove authorship or remove dependence on Ma'atara service availability. The roadmap targets C2PA interoperability and the emerging duty-of-care provenance regimes.

Everyday users

A really nice notes app where the words you write stay yours — readable on authorised devices, encrypted in normal server storage, and accompanied by evidence showing which key signed each recorded version.

Partners & integrators

If you ship anything where authorship, consent or evidentiary integrity matter — a CMS, a journal platform, a model registry, a court e-filing system, a creator marketplace — Ma'atara is designed to slot underneath it. Reach out at parable.social.

Parable is the application layer; Ma'atara is the protocol. The protocol is patent pending. The active native and WASM protocol paths use NIST-standard ML-DSA-65, ML-KEM-768 and SHA3-384 primitives; that does not certify the whole product. Signatures can verify integrity and key authorization, while availability, service-recorded time, indexing and current deployment state still involve operational trust. Inspect available evidence on the Ma’atara Provenance Verify ↗ page.

PATENT PENDING · Ma'atara Protocol · parable.social