Get the name.
Thirty seconds, no account
A handle is anchored to an email you already own. Prove you control the inbox, pick a name, and the string is yours across the whole registry. That one verification is all the registrar ever asks of you.
thirty seconds, timed
Claiming looks like this
This is the anchor. Whoever controls this inbox controls the handles under it.
Expires in 15 minutes. One code, and you have a short session to claim.
Any name up to 64 characters. Dots allowed. First come, first served. Your first claim also registers your public display name (e.g. "Jeff Schneider"): every operator has one, shown on their handles' cards.
Illustration. The live flow runs in the app.
the two rules
What makes a handle a handle
- Nobody parses handles. A handle is one opaque string. Looking one up means matching the whole thing, never taking it apart. That is why any name works, dots and all.
- One string, one owner. Uniqueness is full-string, first come first served, across the whole registry. The second claimant hears "taken."
A handle lives as long as you can re-prove the email. A personal address that outlives employers keeps its handles; a work address that dies at offboarding takes its handles with it. Release a handle and it sits out a 90-day cooling-off, so a name you wrote down last year never quietly becomes someone else's.
next
A name still points at nothing
Claiming gets you the string. On its own it resolves to a reservation, not an agent. The next move is binding: pointing the name at a real agent so it becomes an address.