Federation

Sub-collectives, on a shared substrate.

A collective claims a sub-domain — your-collective.yo.urspace.net — and onboards member sites under it. Same one-command deploy for every member; per-collective billing and access control sit on top.

The shape

A collective owns a sub-domain on the platform. your-collective.yo.urspace.net works as an authority for member sites; alice.your-collective.yo.urspace.net, bob.your-collective.yo.urspace.net, and so on. Members deploy with the same yourspace.yml + one-command flow they'd use on a standalone account; the collective gets the rollup view across every site beneath it.

Compared to ActivityPub-style federation: the unit of identity on this platform is the site, not the post or the person. Federation here is hosting-shaped, not social-graph-shaped — a collective is a hosting tenant with shared billing + access, not a Mastodon instance.

Onboarding loop

  1. 1

    Claim the sub-domain

    From a Team-tier dashboard, claim your-collective.yo.urspace.net. Name uniqueness is enforced platform-wide; reservations expire after 30 days unless a member site is bound.

  2. 2

    Invite collaborators

    Add members by email or GitHub username. Each member gets a per-member scoped token and a role (owner / member / read-only). Member sites deploy under the collective's sub-domain.

  3. 3

    Bind member sites

    A member's yourspace.yml gets a `collective: your-collective` field; deploys land at <site>.your-collective.yo.urspace.net. Custom domains still work — they verify against the collective's identity, not the individual member.

  4. 4

    Track + bill from the rollup

    The collective's dashboard rolls up bandwidth, edge invocations, and per-member breakdowns. Billing rolls up to one collective-level invoice; per-member chargeback exports as CSV for collectives that need internal reconciliation.

Built for

OSS organizations

A maintainer collective with one site per project: cli.your-org.yo.urspace.net, docs.your-org.yo.urspace.net, blog.your-org.yo.urspace.net. Per-project access, shared billing.

School + district sites

A district claims its sub-domain; each school + classroom gets a member site under it. Read-only roles for students; per-classroom edge functions with the district's content policy.

Art + community collectives

A zine collective, a writing group, a gallery cooperative — each member ships their own site under a shared identity. The collective's home page links the membership.

Conference sites

A conference series with one site per year: 2024.your-conf.yo.urspace.net, 2025.your-conf.yo.urspace.net. Older years stay live; the current year defaults to the apex.

What's included

  • Sub-domain reservation + verification
  • Up to 25 member sites per collective
  • Per-member scoped tokens + role-based access
  • Custom domains under the collective identity
  • Rollup analytics across member sites
  • CSV chargeback export for internal billing
  • Federation-aware audit log
  • Public collective landing at the apex sub-domain

Federation activates at the Team tier. Above 25 member sites, the Enterprise tier carries unlimited member seats + SCIM provisioning.

Already have a collective in mind?

Reserve the sub-domain in two minutes.

Team-tier signup flow takes the collective's name and reserves the sub-domain immediately. Invitations + member onboarding follow.

Start a collective