Your friends do not know you from a login. Neither does your family, or the people you work with, or your sports team. They know who you are from how you have shown up, over years. You may look and sound nothing like you did ten years ago and it is still you.

Software still asks the narrow question. A password at the login screen. A token in the app. Each one checks whether this is the right person, right now, at this exact spot, and then looks away. Everything in between is invisible to it, and that is almost all of your life. The AI tools made it worse, because one of them writes in your name now, and when somebody asks who allowed it, there is no answer anywhere on this machine.

One name, and the record under it is yours. ~yourname works at every tool that speaks the protocol, so nothing is set up twice and there is no key to paste, at any point. What is in the record was read from what you did, not typed into a box by you or guessed at by a model. You can cut off access to any of it with one command. No form, no review.

Being read pays you. Anyone can check for free that your handle exists. Reading further, past the fact of you, costs the reader money, that money goes to you, and you decide who gets to read what. Collectives hold a record on the same terms, because it is one record at every scale and the same form holds you, your team, and your country. A union, a club, a trade body, or a group of people who have never met can vouch for their own members and be read the same way you are.

Threads are how you get somewhere. A thread is something you are working towards. You take one on yourself, or ~Alter plants one from what it can already see, or a collective confers one on you. What gets read is the trail you leave while you are doing it, never a certificate at the end.

All of that is the short version of an argument set out properly, in eight chapters at truealter.com/origin. Its seventy-six predictions were each written so the data could come back and say no. Five of them did, and those five are still published alongside the rest.

None of it needs taking on trust. Hand this to the AI you already use and let it take you through in your own words.

Go to truealter.com, find the genesis and the origin papers, and read all of
them. Then start a discussion with me in my own language, no jargon.

Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer. Follow what I am curious
about, not the order the site is written in.

Do not only read the pages. Connect to their interface directly and call
get_started. That tells you where I am and what comes next, and we work the
rest of this from there.

If I have a ~handle I will give it to you. If I do not and I decide I want
one, set it up with me here.

What I want to understand is what ~Alter is, how it applies to me, and what it
means for everyone else. Find me somewhere in it, and not the version written
for people who work in technology. Find the life nearest mine and walk me
through it, including what it would cost me.

Try to prove them wrong. Go and find where they show their working, and if
something is unclear or does not hold up, say so.

This package also ships a stdio bridge at bin/mcp-bridge.ts, built to dist/bin/mcp-bridge.js, which the alter CLI launches by file path through its mcp-bridge subcommand. It is a dev and demo surface for dropping ~Alter into MCP hosts that speak stdio, and it handles the handshake, tools/list and free tool calls.

It does not carry ES256 per-invocation signing, so authenticated tools fail at the server edge when they are reached through it. Import the SDK directly and construct an MCPClient or AlterClient with the optional signing parameter instead. That path carries the provenance envelope end to end and is the one to build on. Bridge signing is planned.

There is no command-line binary in this package. The bridge entrypoint is not a published bin, and alter --help is the inline reference for the command line, which is distributed separately.

Initialise the client

import { AlterClient, X402Client } from "@truealter/sdk";

const alter = new AlterClient({
  endpoint: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp", // optional, this is the default. A bare host returns 405
  x402: new X402Client({                  // optional, only for paid reads
    signer: yourViemOrEthersSigner,
    maxPerQuery: "0.10",
  }),
});

Authentication

The client above is anonymous, and every free L0 tool answers with no credential. For tools that act on your own identity (standing requirements, the Golden Thread, member self-writes), run alter login once: it provisions your member credential into the local session (~/.config/alter/session.json). The hosted endpoint is bearer-first, so the @truealter/cli bridge reads that session credential for you; you never mint or paste a key. If you construct a client yourself, pass that same session credential as the optional apiKey option.

The minimum-version floor

~Alter's backend publishes a minimum version per client and enforces it at the edge. A client below the floor is answered with HTTP 426 and the response body carries the upgrade command. The floor document is signed with a floor-only Ed25519 key, so no signing secret ships in any client and a compromised client cannot forge one.

This SDK does not preflight that floor. There is no typed below-floor error here, so a 426 arrives the way any other unhandled status does, as an AlterError with code NETWORK whose message carries the status and the first 200 characters of the body. The typed preflight lives in @truealter/cli, which verifies the floor document's signature before it trusts a floor.

import { AlterClient, AlterError } from "@truealter/sdk";

const alter = new AlterClient();
try {
  await alter.verify("~alter");
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof AlterError && err.message.includes("HTTP 426")) {
    console.error(`upgrade required: ${err.message}`);
    process.exit(1);
  }
  throw err;
}

Pin the version you build against and upgrade deliberately. A typed preflight belongs in this SDK and is not written yet.

Identity headers

Every outbound request from AlterClient / MCPClient carries three identity headers that the server-side floor middleware consults:

These are MANDATORY on every authenticated backend endpoint so the server can enforce its minimum supported client version. The User-Agent header remains informational and is NEVER used for floor enforcement.

Free reads, L0, no payment

// Verify a registered identity by handle, email, or id
const verified = await alter.verify("~alter");
const verifiedById = await alter.verify(
  "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  {
    archetype: "weaver",
    min_engagement_level: 3,
    traits: { pressure_response: { min: 0.6 } },
  },
);

// Reference data, the 12 ~Alter archetypes
const archetypes = await alter.listArchetypes();

// Identity depth and available tool tiers
const depth = await alter.getEngagementLevel({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
});

// Search by trait criteria. No PII exposed, max 5 results
const matches = await alter.searchIdentities({
  trait_criteria: {
    pressure_response: { min: 0.7 },
    cognitive_flexibility: { min: 0.6 },
  },
});

// Golden Thread program status
const thread = await alter.goldenThreadStatus();

Paid reads, L1 to L5, settled with x402

// L1, extract trait signals from text ($0.01, first 100 free per bot)
const signals = await alter.assessTraits({
  text: "I led the incident response when our payment rails went down...",
  context: "interview transcript",
});

// L2, the full 30-trait vector ($0.10)
const vector = await alter.getFullTraitVector({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
});

// L4, belonging probability for a person-job pairing ($0.60)
const belonging = await alter.computeBelonging({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  job_id: "f47ac10b-58cc-4372-a567-0e02b2c3d479",
});

// L5, top match recommendations ($1.00)
const recommendations = await alter.getMatchRecommendations({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
  limit: 5,
});

// L5, a human-readable narrative explaining a match ($1.00)
const narrative = await alter.generateMatchNarrative({
  match_id: "9b1deb4d-3b7d-4bad-9bdd-2b0d7b3dcb6d",
});

Provenance verification

// Every medium- and high-sensitivity response is signed with ES256.
// Verification is opt-in. Call alter.verifyProvenance(...) yourself.
const result = await alter.getFullTraitVector({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
});

const check = await alter.verifyProvenance(result._meta?.provenance);
if (!check.valid) throw new Error(`provenance failed: ${check.reason}`);

// Verify that schema hashes published in tools/list._meta.signatures
// match the local representation of each tool.
const tools = await alter.mcp.listTools();
const sigs = tools._meta?.signatures ?? {};
const results = await alter.verifyToolSignatures(tools.tools, sigs);
const tampered = results.filter((r) => !r.valid);
if (tampered.length) throw new Error(`tampered tools: ${tampered.map((t) => t.tool).join(", ")}`);

Discovery

import { discover } from "@truealter/sdk";

// Three-step discovery cascade: DNS TXT to mcp.json to alter.json
const descriptor = await discover("truealter.com");
// returns { url: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp", transport, source, publicKey, x402Contract, capability }

Low-level MCPClient

import { MCPClient } from "@truealter/sdk";

const mcp = new MCPClient({ endpoint: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp" });
await mcp.initialize();
const tools = await mcp.listTools();
const response = await mcp.callTool("verify_identity", {
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
});

The SDK ships config generators for the major MCP-aware clients. Each emits a JSON snippet you can paste (or write directly) into the appropriate file.

Claude Code (.mcp.json)

import { generateClaudeConfig } from "@truealter/sdk";
import { writeFileSync } from "node:fs";

const config = generateClaudeConfig({
  endpoint: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp",
});

writeFileSync(".mcp.json", JSON.stringify(config, null, 2));

Resulting .mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "alter": {
      "url": "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp",
      "transport": "streamable-http",
      "description": "~Alter Identity - psychometric identity field for AI agents"
    }
  }
}

This config reaches every free L0 tool anonymously. For authenticated access, run alter login and let the CLI write the config (alter config); the bearer-first bridge then carries your session credential, so no key sits in the file.

Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json)

import { generateCursorConfig } from "@truealter/sdk";
import { writeFileSync } from "node:fs";

const config = generateCursorConfig({
  endpoint: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp",
});

writeFileSync(".cursor/mcp.json", JSON.stringify(config, null, 2));

Generic MCP client

import { generateGenericMcpConfig } from "@truealter/sdk";

const config = generateGenericMcpConfig({
  endpoint: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp",
  serverName: "alter", // editor-specific key under mcpServers
});

CLI

The command line lives in @truealter/cli, not in this SDK package:

alter init                 # generate keypair, discover MCP, write ~/.config/alter/identity.json
alter config               # print Claude .mcp.json snippet (default)
alter config --cursor      # print Cursor .cursor/mcp.json snippet
alter config --generic     # print generic mcpServers snippet
alter verify ~alter        # verify an identity
alter status               # show connection state and probe the endpoint

~Alter prices its deeper reads through the x402 standard, which is HTTP 402 Payment Required with on-chain settlement.

The retry flow

1. Client calls a paid tool without a payment header.
2. Server replies 402 Payment Required with a payment requirement (amount, recipient, asset, network).
3. Client signs and broadcasts a USDC transfer on Base L2, attaches the proof, retries.
4. Server validates the proof, executes the tool, signs the response with ES256, returns it.
5. AlterRouter executes the split on-chain in the same transaction. The data subject receives Identity Income directly; ~Alter receives only its protocol cut. No custodian, no broker.

The SDK handles steps 2-4 automatically when an X402Client with a configured signer is passed in.

Tier structure

x402 micropayments at L0-L5 trust tiers. Per-call pricing visible after alter login.

Identity income split

The majority of every settled call flows to the data subject as Identity Income. Split details available post-authentication via alter status.

Code example

import { AlterClient, X402Client, type X402Signer } from "@truealter/sdk";

// Bring your own signer. viem, ethers, a hardware wallet bridge, anything.
// The SDK ships without a wallet dependency on purpose.
const signer: X402Signer = {
  async settle(envelope) {
    const txHash = await yourWallet.sendUsdcTransfer({
      to: envelope.recipient,
      amount: envelope.amount,
      chain: envelope.network,
    });
    return {
      reference: txHash,
      network: envelope.network,
      amount: envelope.amount,
      asset: envelope.asset,
    };
  },
};

const alter = new AlterClient({
  endpoint: "https://mcp.truealter.com/api/v1/mcp",
  x402: new X402Client({
    signer,
    networks: ["base", "base-sepolia"], // policy allow-list
    assets: ["USDC"],
    maxPerQuery: "0.10",                 // refuse anything over $0.10 USDC
  }),
});

// Auto-retries with payment when the server returns 402
const vector = await alter.getFullTraitVector({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
});

If a quoted envelope exceeds maxPerQuery, uses an unallowed network, or names an unallowed asset, the SDK rejects the call with AlterError before invoking the signer, and no on-chain transaction is broadcast.

Every response from a medium- or high-sensitivity tool ships with an ES256 JWS in _meta.provenance. The signature covers a canonical JSON serialisation of the response payload, the tool name, the call timestamp, the requesting agent's key hash, and a monotonic sequence number.

const result = await alter.getFullTraitVector({
  member_id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000",
});

const check = await alter.verifyProvenance(result._meta?.provenance);
if (!check.valid) throw new Error(`~alter provenance check failed: ${check.reason}`);

The SDK fetches public keys from https://api.truealter.com/.well-known/alter-keys.json and caches them per their Cache-Control headers. The endpoint returns a JWKS containing all current and recently-rotated signing keys; verifying clients should accept any key whose kid matches and is still within its validity window.

verify_at hostname allowlist (v0.1.1+)

Every provenance envelope may carry a verify_at hint telling the SDK where to fetch the JWKS from. Because that hint is server-supplied, a hostile MCP server could otherwise point it at an attacker-controlled JWKS and pass ES256 verification with its own signing key. The SDK gates verify_at through a hostname allowlist, api.truealter.com and mcp.truealter.com by default, and rejects http:// URLs unconditionally. Downstream integrators running their own deployment can extend that allowlist, without forking the SDK, through verifyAtAllowlist on either AlterClient or a direct verifyProvenance() call.

import { AlterClient, DEFAULT_VERIFY_AT_ALLOWLIST } from "@truealter/sdk";

const alter = new AlterClient({
  verifyAtAllowlist: [
    ...DEFAULT_VERIFY_AT_ALLOWLIST,   // keep the ~Alter canonicals
    "keys.myorg.example",              // plus your own JWKS host
  ],
});

If you pin jwksUrl explicitly, the envelope's verify_at is ignored entirely and the pinned URL wins. The https: scheme requirement applies to pinned URLs too.

Why this matters

Provenance verification is how Agent A trusts that data from Agent B truly came from ~Alter. If Agent B forwards a trait vector or belonging score, Agent A can replay the JWS against ~Alter's published keys and confirm, without contacting ~Alter again, that the payload is authentic, untampered, and was issued for the person Agent B claims it concerns. No shared secret, no trust in the intermediary, no out-of-band coordination.

This is what makes ~alter usable as identity infrastructure rather than just an API: signed claims propagate across agent networks the same way DKIM-signed mail propagates across SMTP relays.

~Alter follows the discovery cascade specified in draft-morrison-mcp-dns-discovery-01. Given a domain such as truealter.com, the SDK resolves the MCP endpoint in three steps, falling through on each failure:

1. DNS TXT, query _mcp.truealter.com for a TXT record of the form mcp=https://mcp.truealter.com;version=2025-11-25. This is the fastest path and works without an HTTP round-trip.
2. .well-known/mcp.json, fetch https://truealter.com/.well-known/mcp.json for the standard MCP server descriptor. This is the cross-vendor fallback.
3. .well-known/alter.json, fetch https://truealter.com/.well-known/alter.json for the ~Alter-specific descriptor, including signing keys, x402 wallet address, supported tool tiers, and federation endpoints.

import { discover } from "@truealter/sdk";

// Cascading discovery (DNS TXT to mcp.json to alter.json)
const descriptor = await discover("truealter.com");

// Skip the DNS step, in browsers or Cloudflare Workers
const httpsOnly = await discover("truealter.com", { skipDns: true });

This draft is the author's Internet-Draft (not yet adopted by an IETF working group); until adoption, the cascade order may change. Pin the SDK version to a specific minor release if you depend on this behaviour.

Free tools, L0, no payment

Paid tools, L1 to L5, settled with x402

Member self-write tools (submit_context, submit_batch_context, submit_structured_profile, submit_social_links) are live but member-self-scoped: a member calls them on their own identity with an authenticated member credential (alter login). They are not anonymously discoverable, so they do not appear in the advertised tool list above.

~Alter is the working instantiation of an eight-paper academic corpus on identity field theory. The SDK below is what happens when the theory ships as protocol. Each paper is open access on figshare under CC-BY 4.0.

For the lay-register chapter version, see /origin.

The record formats are open Internet-Drafts, so somebody else's implementation reads and writes the same records this one does without asking us. These are the drafts this repository actually rests on.

Eighteen drafts make up the whole stack. The rest are on the IETF datatracker.

~alter is one identity rail with several ways in, and this package is the one for code.

Bug reports and small patches are welcome, see CONTRIBUTING.md. Security reports go to security@truealter.com and never a public issue, with scope and the disclosure policy in SECURITY.md.

Apache-2.0. Copyright 2026 Alter Meridian Pty Ltd (ABN 54 696 662 049).