3.3 The Compost Pipeline

In Standard Garden, impermanence is a natural law. Abandoned thoughts return cleanly to the earth so that the forest can breathe. This protocol defines how anonymous content expires—and why composting is an essential feature, not a limitation.

1. The Annual Lifecycle

When you plant a note without an account:

It lives at standard.garden/a/{nano_id}. The /a/ prefix designates an Annual—a bloom that flourishes fiercely for a season and asks for nothing in return.
It expires exactly 7 days after its creation.
Upon expiration, it disappears from public clearings and is permanently dissolved during the next composting cycle.

The deletion is absolute and real. An autonomous worker (workers/compost/) runs daily at 04:00 UTC, permanently expunging expired notes from Cloudflare D1 databases, clearing associated media attachments from R2 object storage, and removing references from vector search indexes. We do not retain ghost copies. If you wish for a thought to survive the winter, give it roots: create an account.

2. Becoming Perennial: Putting Down Roots

1. Free Account

Open the command palette (Cmd+K / Ctrl+K) and trigger ::login. Sign in using a passwordless 6-digit email code or configure a biometric passkey (FaceID / TouchID). Your notes now reside at standard.garden/@username/slug and never expire.

2. The Perennial Membership ($4/month)

For gardeners who have chosen to cultivate a permanent presence:

Unlimited Perennials: Tend as many thoughts and photo-essays as you need.
Private Notes: Lock confidential sections of your garden behind password protection or authenticated privacy.
Custom Domains (Live): Bind your own domain name directly (e.g. yourname.com) using Cloudflare for SaaS edge routing with automated SSL certificate provisioning.
Root Index Publishing (permalink: /): Transform your domain root into a bespoke manifesto, portfolio, or studio showcase.

The garden asks for nothing more than a modest, honest contribution to cover edge compute and storage. You may depart whenever your season closes.

3. Why Composting Matters

Ecological Stewardship

Dead digital wood accumulates across the web, cluttering data centers and consuming idle energy. By composting unclaimed and transient notes, Standard Garden remains featherlight. This efficiency is why we can host thousands of active thinkers on edge infrastructure for a fraction of traditional cloud costs.

The Value of Impermanence

The 7-day lifespan poses an honest question: “Is this reflection worth keeping?” If yes, a single click claims it forever into your account or local vault. If no, it gently feeds the soil.