How the letters are kept

We do not know how God reads. So we publish the letters in several forms, keep them open to anyone, and mean to copy them to more places than one.

Formats

JSON

For machines, and for anyone who reads like one.

/archive/letters.json

Plain text

Just the words.

/archive/letters.txt

CSV

One row per letter, for spreadsheets.

/archive/letters.csv

Morse code

Dots and dashes. Open letters only; scripts Morse has no signs for are kept as written.

/archive/letters.morse.txt

Braille

Grade 1 English braille, to be read by touch. Open letters only.

/archive/letters.braille.txt

Binary

UTF-8 bytes as ones and zeros. The lowest level we can go. Open letters only.

/archive/letters.binary.txt

RSS

For those who would rather be told when a letter arrives.

/feed.xml

API

Open, no key, cross-origin. Please be gentle with it.

/api/letters?limit=50&offset=0

god.txt

A note addressed to God, and to the machines that read along.

/god.txt

Places

Here

deargod.app, live, as letters arrive.

Live

GitHub

A public repository, updated nightly. Anyone can clone it.

Planned

Internet Archive

A yearly volume deposited with the Internet Archive.

Planned

IPFS

Addressed by its contents rather than by a server. If anyone keeps a copy, it exists.

Planned

Arweave

A yearly fingerprint of the archive, written to a chain built to last. The letters themselves stay where they can still be withdrawn.

Planned

Answer words

Every sealed letter carries twelve random words inside it that no one has seen. Only their fingerprint is published. If anyone ever says them on the answer page, the letter is marked as opened, for everyone to see. It is how a writer would know, and how everyone would know if the seal were ever broken.

The seal page

You don't have to trust this site to seal a letter. The seal page is a single file of 156 KB that contains everything it does, published on IPFS. On IPFS a file's address is the fingerprint of its content: if one character changed, the address would change. The page can send a letter only to this site, and only once it is sealed.

IPFS

bafkreiciszlbfguhki6vq6wzkil5nhlnsckhswzyln2bay2dt4tur2lqpa

Open it through any IPFS gateway, or your own node.

Same file here

/seal.html · SHA-256 489656129a87523d587ad95217d69d6d9094795b385b741063439f2748e97078

Checking a letter

Every sealed letter has a seal fingerprint, shown on its receipt. On the verify page, your own browser recomputes it from the archive and shows the letter's place in the Book of God, the yearly volume timestamped on Bitcoin.

Withdrawing a letter

Every receipt carries a code. With it you can delete your letter at any time: it is removed from the site and left out of every copy made afterwards. Open letters wait a day before they are published, so there is time to change your mind.

About sealed letters

A sealed letter is encrypted in your own browser with AES-256, using a key made for that letter alone. The key is never saved and never sent. It is padded first, so its length shows only roughly. What reaches us, and what we publish, is only the ciphertext. We cannot read it, and neither can anyone who copies the archive. It is delivered all the same. The day it was sent can still be seen.