Alexandria · Since 2014

Twelve years later,
the pieces are finally here.

Alexandria began in 2014 as an experiment in building a persistent, permissionless index for the world’s media and knowledge. That work became Open Index Protocol and grew through working prototypes and pilots spanning media distribution, public records, scientific data, archives, and AI-assisted retrieval. For most of that time, one or more critical pieces of the stack were still missing. They are not anymore. Bitcoin can provide durable public proof, distributed storage can preserve the underlying media, structured knowledge graphs can connect records instead of leaving them isolated, and modern AI can finally make that graph natural to explore. We’re building a new generation of Alexandria now, with an early release coming soon.

Two ways into the same library

Alexandria.io

The library

Alexandria.io is where you explore the public graph directly. Browse collections, open original records, follow people, places, dates and events, move between connections, timelines and maps, and inspect the provenance behind what you find. Historical archives, live public events and commercial media all use the same underlying record system. HYPATIA stays beside you when you want help understanding what you are seeing.

AskHypatia.com

The librarian

AskHypatia.com is where you talk to the library. HYPATIA — the HYPermedia Agent for Transparent Information Access — can search the public graph, traverse its relationships, compare sources and answer in natural language while keeping the records behind the answer visible. Speak or type, return to earlier research, open any cited source in Alexandria, and see where the evidence agrees, conflicts, or remains incomplete.

Why now

Open Index Protocol: Twelve years of protocol work established the core idea: publish structured records into a permissionless shared index, connect them to one another, and let many applications compete on top of the same public data.
Bitcoin + distributed storage: Bitcoin can provide durable proof and canonical publication order without carrying the full library itself. OIP nodes can retain the index while BitTorrent, IPFS, Arweave, the web, and future storage networks carry large files.
AI + the knowledge graph: The missing interface has arrived. Modern models can read, summarize and compare records, while the graph supplies explicit relationships among people, places, events, documents and media. HYPATIA turns that structure into a conversation.
Private memory, too: Alfred Remembers applies the same graph-based approach to a person’s private work and life. Public Alexandria and private memory stay separate, but the user can let the two work together when useful.

Scribes of Alexandria extends the system into the live web: capture a page, preserve a timestamped record of what was there, compare later changes, and ask HYPATIA about it in the context of the wider graph.

A first look

Where Alexandria is going

These interface studies show the experience we are building: one connected library, explored through records, maps, timelines and conversations. Use the appearance control above to view the matching light and dark studies.