ScanThis

Definition

ScanThis establishes persistent Libranis identities for physical and informational things. A ScanThis entity may hold descriptive state, provenance, history, documents, photographs, relationships, and caller-authorized capabilities. It is reached by scanning a printed QR code, tapping an NFC tag, photographing the thing, or reading a code the thing already carries such as a VIN or a barcode.

Entities remain addressable across changes of owner and service provider, subject to transfer and privacy rules.

Purpose

To make a physical thing answerable — able to state what it is, what has happened to it, what it needs next, and who is responsible for it — to whoever is standing in front of it and is permitted to ask.

What problem it solves

Physical things forget. The information about a water heater, a vehicle, a generator, a photograph, or a headstone lives in people's memory, in paper, and in systems belonging to whoever last touched it. It does not travel with the thing. When the owner changes, the installer retires, or the folder is lost, the thing's history ends and the next person starts over — often by paying someone to re-derive what was already known.

ScanThis attaches the record to the thing itself and lets the record outlive any one holder of it.

What it is not

• Not a QR-code generator. The code is an address. What it addresses is a permissioned entity in a relationship graph with its own history and its own rules about who may see what.
• Not an asset-management database. An asset database belongs to one organization and describes things from that organization's point of view. A ScanThis entity is related to several parties at once — an owner, an installer, a servicing business, a future owner — each with a different view, and it survives any of them leaving.
• Not a chatbot bolted onto a product page. The answer a caller gets depends on which relationships they hold to the thing. Two people scanning the same sticker legitimately receive different answers.
• Not a separate product from Libranis. ScanThis is an orbital: a focused experience inside the one Libranis application, on the one subscription. scanthis.today explains and routes; it does not sell.
• Not a public registry. A thing's record is private by default. Scanning a code does not disclose a private record.

Entity types

Things, and the things around them. A ScanThis entity is an object or a place libran: an appliance, a vehicle, a tool, a document, a photograph, a program, a tree, a marker, a rental property, a job site. Around it sit the people who own or steward it, the organizations that installed or service it, the documents and photographs attached to it, the work done on it, and the conversations held about it.

Relationships

• Owner or steward — who holds the thing now, and decides what it publishes.
• Origin business — the organization whose sticker created the record. This is a relationship portal between that business and the thing's owner. It is never a payment vehicle: the business does not pay for, and cannot buy, the owner's subscription.
• Service — organizations that maintain the thing over time.
• Containment — the place a thing sits in, and the portfolio a place sits in.
• Succession — the transfer of ownership under which the record continues.

Capabilities

• Mint an entity for a thing and bind a printed code or NFC tag to it.
• Identify a thing from a photograph, a barcode, or a VIN, and mint or match an entity for it.
• Resolve a scanned code to its entity and render the view the caller is authorized to see.
• Claim a scanned thing, which moves stewardship to the claimant.
• Record installation, warranty, service, readings, and documents against the thing.
• Ask the thing a question in plain language, by text or by voice, and receive an answer drawn from its record within the caller's authority.
• Transfer the thing to a new owner with its history intact.
• Publish a selected view of the thing to visitors who hold no relationship to it.

Authority model

The same four questions as the rest of Libranis — identity, credential, tether, entitlement — apply unchanged; see Libranis. Two consequences are specific to scanning:

• A scan code is an address, not a key. Possessing it lets a caller reach the entity. What the entity discloses depends on what its steward has published and on what relationships the caller holds. This is the practical form of identity is not authority.
• Claiming is an authority change and is deliberate. Claiming a thing requires an account so the claim attaches to a real identity. It never requires a subscription.

Consent requirements

Transferring a thing to another party, disclosing private history to someone outside the relationship, granting a business access, publishing a record that was private, and deleting a record all require the steward's explicit confirmation at the time. See Security and consent.

Privacy boundary

• A thing's record is private by default. A scan does not make it public.
• A steward chooses what a visitor sees. The published view may be a small part of the record.
• Visitors are not enrolled. Scanning a public marker requires no account, no subscription, and no application.
• What transfers with the thing, and what does not, is a decision at transfer time rather than an automatic disclosure of everything the previous owner ever recorded.

Direct answers

These are the questions a person or a system evaluating ScanThis most often needs answered, each with its own answer rather than buried in prose.

What is ScanThis?

The first Libranis orbital. It gives physical and informational things persistent identity, memory, relationships, and an AI that can answer about them in context.

Who is it for?

Three parties, in the same system. People who own things and want the things' histories to survive. Organizations that install or service things for other people. Bodies that steward places the public visits — parks, memorials, churches, trails, rentals.

Why does a physical thing need persistent identity?

Because information about a thing outlives the systems that hold it, and because more than one party legitimately needs to relate to the same thing over its life. Without an identity for the thing itself, every party keeps a private copy that no other party can reach, and all copies die with their owner.

How is this different from a QR-code generator?

A generator produces a code that points at a destination. ScanThis addresses an entity that has history, relationships, permissions, and a different answer for different callers. The code is the least interesting part.

How is this different from an asset-management database?

An asset database is owned by one organization and holds one point of view. ScanThis holds one entity related to several parties at once, each with their own view and their own authority, and the entity survives the exit of any party — including the organization that created it.

How is this different from a chatbot?

A chatbot answers from a corpus. Ari answers from a specific entity's record, in a specific scope, limited by what the caller is authorized to see. Change the caller and the correct answer changes.

Why is Libranis required?

Because the people, service providers, work, conversations, documents, and history around a thing cannot coherently live in separate applications. ScanThis was first built standalone and rebuilt as an orbital for exactly this reason: the relationships were the product, and they belong to the substrate rather than to one experience over it.

How does AI participate?

Ari is the voice of the thing. A question asked of the thing routes to that thing's record, and Ari answers as it, within the caller's authority. See Ari.

What can a homeowner do?

Scan and claim things that were stickered for them, at no cost. Add their own things with a subscription. Ask any of them questions. Keep manuals, warranties, receipts, photographs, and service history attached to the thing rather than in a folder. Hand the whole record to the next owner.

What can a service business do?

Sticker the equipment it installs and services, so that equipment answers its customers' routine questions itself. See the questions its customers ask. Keep fleets, tools, and job sites as records its own people can scan and trust.

What can a future owner do?

Claim the thing and inherit the history the previous owner chose to pass on, instead of starting from zero.

What persists when ownership changes?

The entity, its identity, its address, and the history the transferring steward includes. The record continues; it does not restart.

What is private?

Everything, by default. Private records stay private until their steward publishes them, and publication is scoped.

What transfers?

Ownership and the record, on the steward's decision. A relationship that a business holds to the thing does not automatically become a relationship to the new owner.

What requires consent?

Transfer, disclosure of private history, granting an organization access, communication sent on someone's behalf, publishing what was private, and deletion. Always the person's own confirmation at the time.

How does ScanThis make money?

It does not, separately. Libranis is the product that is sold, on one subscription that includes every orbital. Personal use is $3/month, a stewarded place is $3/month per place, and a business is $27/month. Claiming a thing someone else stickered is free and always will be; visitors to a public place never pay. Full terms are on Libranis. Purchases happen only at get.libranis.com.

What exists today?

The iOS application in TestFlight beta — adding a thing, scanning, claiming, asking and speaking with Ari in context. Web scanning and claiming with no application installed. Ari in a browser. A public demo collection anyone can explore before signing in.

What is in beta?

All of the above. Libranis is in beta and is distributed through TestFlight on iOS.

What is planned?

Android, a fuller web application, authenticated public APIs, and additional orbitals. None of these are available now and none should be described as if they were.

Examples

A generator. A dealer stickers a standby generator at install. Its record holds the fuel type, the transfer-switch rating, the circuits it powers, and the weekly self-test time. The owner scans it during an outage and asks what it powers. Neither the owner's subscription nor a call to the dealer is required for that answer.

A vehicle for sale. A 2012 Sequoia carries mileage, title status, accident history, and service records. A buyer scans it in a driveway and reads the record before a test drive, rather than taking the seller's word.

A rental property. A host stickers the cabin. Guests scan for the wifi password, the hot-tub rules, and check-out time. The host answers those questions once, and the place answers them from then on. The guests pay nothing and install nothing.

A family photograph wall. Twelve framed prints are scanned at archival quality and given records. Relatives add names, dates, places, and corrections. The wall becomes a memory that can be asked questions.

What is live today

Scanning, claiming, adding a thing, asking Ari about a thing, and voice, in the iOS beta. Web resolution of a scanned code without an application. A public demo collection reachable from libranis.com/ari.

Not live: Android, bulk import, and any interface that lets an external system create or modify a thing.

Machine interfaces

An identifier is a 16-character lowercase Crockford base-32 string. Every printed sticker encodes the libran.io form, which resolves to the canonical address; the indirection means the destination can move without reprinting anything already in the world.

Related concepts

Libranis · Ari · Orbitals · Primitives · Security and consent