Autonomic Space

An autonomic space is the sovereign data primitive of TinyCloud: a named container, rooted in an owner DID, that holds the data exposed by its services (kv, sql, encryption, …). A space is SpaceId { base_did, name } — an account is the namespace root, and spaces are its named children. It is "autonomic" because it governs its own access entirely through capability signatures rooted at its owner, with no external account or registry to consult.

Role

Spaces live in Layer 1 and are the unit of ownership and addressing. Every resource in TinyCloud is named relative to a space (see uri-addressing-grammar), every capability is scoped to a space, and every invocation resolves to a space's owner via its delegation chain. The fixed-name system spaces (default, public, account, secrets, applications) are just conventional space names off the same owner DID.

Mechanics

A space is created lazily, never by an explicit "create" call. When a delegation is transacted, the node scans its capabilities for one whose ability is exactly tinycloud.space/host against a bare space resource — service space, no path, no query, no fragment — and inserts that SpaceId into the space table (idempotently, on-conflict-do-nothing). This is the transact path in tinycloud-core/src/db.rs:~795:

(Resource::TinyCloud(r), "tinycloud.space/host")
    if r.path().is_none()
        && r.service().as_str() == "space"
        && r.query().is_none()
        && r.fragment().is_none()
=> Some(SpaceIdWrap(r.space().clone()))

So "hosting a space" is holding (or being delegated) the tinycloud.space/host capability for it. The owner of a space is whoever the SpaceId's base_did resolves to — checked by root-authority verification in delegation (is_root_authority compares the space's DID to the delegator). The SDK drives this through ensureSpaceExists / host-SIWE on first use (see sign-in flow).

Shape

SpaceId is defined in tinycloud-auth/src/resource.rs:

pub struct SpaceId { base_did: DIDBuf, name: Name }

• base_did — the owner DID, e.g. did:pkh:eip155:1:0xf39F…2266 (canonicalized; see dids).
• name — a free Name string (validation is a TODO in code — any string parses today).
• Wire form (Display): tinycloud:{suffix}:{name} where suffix is the base DID with the leading did: (4 chars) stripped — e.g. tinycloud:pkh:eip155:1:0xf39f…2266:default. Full resource grammar in uri-addressing-grammar.
• A space's content identifier is SpaceId::get_cid() — a CIDv1 (raw codec, Blake2b-256) over its display string.

Relationships

Owned by a DID; addressed via the URI grammar; the fixed names are the system spaces; exposes services; access is granted by capabilities scoped to it and passed via delegation; hosted/created by the tinycloud.space/host ability; data lives in content-addressed storage keyed by SpaceId + hash; ordering of its events is handled by consistency.

Example

A user signs in and the SDK ensures …:default exists: a SIWE delegation carrying tinycloud.space/host over tinycloud:pkh:eip155:1:0xf39f…2266:default/space is transacted, the node inserts that SpaceId, and subsequent tinycloud.kv/put invocations against …:default/kv/notes/ are admitted because their delegation chain roots at the same owner DID.

Status & drift

Shipped. Vocabulary is locked to "space" — "namespace" and "orbit" are retired (no orbit exists in code). Space name validation is an open TODO in resource.rs (Name::from_str accepts any string).

Sources

• tinycloud-node: tinycloud-auth/src/resource.rs (SpaceId, Display, get_cid), tinycloud-core/src/db.rs:~795 (transact lazy-host), tinycloud-sdk-wasm/src/host.rs