Quick start

1. Sign in

There are three ways in. Pick the one that matches what you already have.

• Get an ohm account. Choose this if you are starting from nothing.
• Sign up with Bluesky. Your posts and the people you follow come with you.
• Connect your own. If your account lives on a server you run, enter your handle.

Whichever you choose, the account is yours and can be moved later. More about signing in

2. Look around your workspace

The workspace has three parts.

• On the left, your labels. They are the sections of your work, in your own words: Writings, Photographs, Things I make. A label can hold sublabels, such as a series or an album.
• In the middle, the post you have open.
• On the right, what the post says about itself: its title, its label, its address, and who can see it.

If you signed up with Bluesky or connected your own account, what you have already published is here. More about the workspace

3. Write a post

Start a new post and write. A post is Markdown, and it can be one sentence.

You do not say what kind of thing it is. A post with a title is a writing, one without is a note, and one that only shows a photograph is an image. ohm reads that from the post.

To add a picture, drop in a file or paste the address of one that is already on the web.

A new post is private. Nobody else can see it. More about posts

4. Decide who sees it

Every post is one of three things.

• Private. Only you.
• Friends. The people you follow who follow you back.
• Public. Everyone, on your website and anywhere else your published layer is read.

Changing this does not share anything yet. It marks the post, and the status line shows what is waiting to be published. More about who sees a post

5. Publish

Press Publish. Before anything happens, you see exactly what will change: which posts will become visible, to whom, and at what address. Say yes, and it is done.

A public post is now part of your published layer and on your website. Anything published is public for good: other services copy it the moment it is written. Taking it down later removes it from your site, not from every copy. More about publishing

6. Connect a folder of your own

Connect a folder on your computer or in the cloud storage you already use, and press Sync. Each post appears there as a Markdown file, filed in a folder named for its label.

From then on your originals live with you, and ohm holds a working copy. Edit a file in the folder and sync, and the change arrives in your workspace. Syncing never publishes.

Until you connect a folder, ohm holds the only copy of your private and friends-only posts. More about syncing

7. Bring in your agent

Connect the coding agent you already use, and it can read and write in your workspace. It reads your private posts too, which is how it knows what you are working on.

It cannot publish or share for you. Anything that changes what other people see is shown to you first. More about your agent

Things to ask your agent first

• "What have I written about this before?"
• "Save this as a private note under Writings."
• "Look at my posts and suggest how to label them."
• "I'm stuck on this. Who among my friends has thought about it?"