Devices & the Vault

Nomad lets you link several Devices (computers, phones) to one identity, so every Device can read and edit all of your Spaces and Drives. This page explains the model and how linking works.

The Vault

A Vault is a private, identity-level store that indexes your Spaces (by their Root Drive key) and your trusted Devices (by their writer key). It is the root of trust for multi-device: every Device you own is a Writer of the Vault.

The Vault is itself a Collaborative Drive (Autobase), so it replicates between your Devices like any other multi-writer Drive — no central server.

Setting up multi-device

The first time you link a Device, Nomad:

  1. Creates your Vault.
  2. Converts each Space’s single-writer Root Drive into a Collaborative Drive so more than one Device can write to it. This is a one-time migration and changes those drives’ internal keys (your public Profile Drive keeps its URL — see below).

Open Settings → Devices to begin.

Adding a device

Linking uses an encrypted, approval-gated handshake (built on Holepunch’s blind-pairing):

  1. On a Device that’s already set up, open Settings → Devices → Add a device to generate an invite code.
  2. On the new Device, enter that code (Nomad mobile offers the same flow under its Devices screen).
  3. The new Device appears as a pending request on the first Device. You approve it there — possessing the invite is not enough on its own.
  4. Once approved, the new Device becomes a Writer of your Vault and every Space, and starts syncing.

Removing a device

Each linked Device has a Remove action. Removing a Device stops it from making further accepted changes. Because Nomad is peer-to-peer, removal cannot retroactively un-share data the Device already synced, and that Device keeps its local copies. For a truly sensitive leak, treat the affected drives as compromised rather than relying on removal alone.

Profile Drives and writer-keys

Your public Profile Drive is special: its hyper:// URL is what your followers point at, so Nomad does not convert it to a Collaborative Drive (that would change the URL). Instead, multi-device authorship works by aggregation:

  • The canonical Profile Drive publishes /.data/walled.garden/writer-keys.json — a walled.garden/writer-keys record listing all your Device keys.
  • Each Device publishes posts under its own key, tagged with author.writerKey.
  • Readers gather posts across every key in writer-keys.json and merge them as one identity.

If you build a social app that reads profiles, aggregate across the keys in writer-keys.json rather than assuming a single author key. See Profile Drives and walled.garden Schemas.