The Cloister is a private walled garden for people who already trust one another — no company in the middle, no admin who can silence you, no algorithm deciding what you see. This page is your guide: what each room does, what is truly safe, and what it asks of you in return.
The first Cloister was a single quiet room, kept by a monk in the Himalayas — a place to speak freely, write things down, and trust that no one was listening who shouldn't be. This is that room, rebuilt in code. Your identity here is a pair of cryptographic keys that no company issues and no company can revoke. Your words travel over nostr, an open protocol nobody owns, instead of sitting in a corporation's database. And your private conversations are sealed before they ever leave your device, so the wires carrying them only ever see locked boxes, never letters.
Nothing about that is a metaphor for marketing's sake — it's the literal architecture. The sections below walk through what that actually means, room by room, in plain language.
The Cloister is not built for the general public. It is built for people who already believe that love is the one true thing that binds us together — a small circle who come here to connect, learn, heal, and evolve through honest conversation and Socratic inquiry. It has no advertising, no growth targets, and no interest in being popular. Its entire design — a shared circle passphrase, a small default relay set, a plain and undecorated interface — assumes you already know and trust the people you'll meet inside it.
If you have found your way here by some other path, and the words above don't describe why you came — this is not the app for you, and that's alright. If you choose to use it anyway, what you do here, and what it costs you, is yours to answer for — not the monk who built the room, and not the open protocol it's built on. That is stated once here, plainly, and again at the close of this page.
Thirteen rooms, laid out exactly as they appear along the bottom of the app. No jargon first — just what each one is for and how to use it. A short technical note sits under each, for anyone who wants to look closer at the stonework.
This is the front room — the shared, scrolling wall everyone in The Cloister posts to. Write a thought, tap post, and it appears for the whole circle. You can attach a photo, mark a post as art to send it to the Gallery too, or mark it as a Scriptorium piece for longer writing.
Find a person or a post. Paste in someone's key, or their name@domain verified handle if they have one, and The Cloister will look them up.
Every piece tagged as art lands here on its own, shown large — photography, audio, video — instead of buried in the scroll of the Wall. It's the room for things meant to be looked at, not just read past.
Where longer writing lives — reflections, notices, teachings, write-ups — set apart from the fast scroll of the Wall so they don't get lost under it. The first line you write becomes the title.
A group is its own small wall inside the wider Cloister — for a class, a study circle, or a project. Anyone can start one (up to seven), give it a name and purpose, and others can join and post within it.
Announce a gathering — a meditation, a talk, a call — with a start time, an optional end time, and a location or link. Others can RSVP so everyone can see who's coming.
A private conversation between two people, sealed before it leaves your device. Only the two of you can ever read it — not the relay carrying it, not anyone else in The Cloister.
A shared, encrypted room for everyone who holds the circle's passphrase — not a one-to-one chat, but a group conversation for the whole gathering. Whoever enters the passphrase first founds the room; sharing that same phrase with others lets them in.
A direct, peer-to-peer call — audio, video, or file transfer — with one other person. Nothing about a live call passes through any server; it travels straight between your device and theirs.
This is the room that holds what makes you you here: a private key, generated on your own device, that nothing and no one else controls. There is no username and password, no company account, no "forgot password" link. Your key is your account.
Your name, a short line about you, a picture, and — optionally — a Lightning address so others can send you sats. This is also where your personal mute list lives.
A quiet shelf for anything worth finding again — a contemplative thread, a Scriptorium piece, a piece of art. Bookmark it once, and it stays here.
The quiet controls: which relays carry your traffic, quiet hours for notifications, clearing your local cache, and the Sovereignty Backup that lets you rebuild your whole presence here on a new device.
Every serious tool deserves an honest account of its own limits. Here is exactly where The Cloister's walls are strong, and where they are not.
There is no password reset here. Your key is the account. If you lose it without a backup, no one — not the monk who built this, not any relay, not anyone — can recover it for you. Back up your key the moment you create it.
The same design that keeps The Cloister private and unowned also means it has no administrator — no one with the power to delete a post, ban a person, or step between two people mid-conversation. That isn't an oversight; it's the entire point of building on an open protocol instead of a company's platform. But a room with no warden only stays gentle if the people inside it choose gentleness themselves.
Muting is real and immediate, but it only ever changes your own view. There is no one else to appeal to and no one else to blame for what you choose to read, keep reading, or walk away from.
The same sealed room that protects a hard conversation between two people healing something also hides whatever anyone chooses to put in it. Use that privacy the way you'd want it used on you.
Public posts are effectively permanent once they reach the open network. Write to the Wall, the Gallery, and the Scriptorium the way you'd write something you're willing to stand behind indefinitely.
This app is powerful precisely because it asks so little of you by way of permission, and so much of you by way of character. It was built on the belief that a small circle bound by love and honest inquiry doesn't need a warden — it needs each person showing up with the same ethics they'd bring to a room with no locks on the door, because that's exactly what this is.
The Cloister is built and maintained by one person, in the open, without a company or a security team behind it. It has been audited carefully and repeatedly — but no software, and certainly no single-file app built without paid infrastructure, is ever beyond flaw. Treat every safeguard described on this page as a serious, good-faith effort, not a guarantee.
You are responsible for your own key, your own backups, your own words, and your own judgment about what to share and with whom. The Cloister cannot undo a lost key, unsend a public post, or reach into a relay you don't control.
This app is not built for public or general use. It exists for a specific, small circle of seekers of truth — people who hold love as the thing that binds us together, and who come here to connect, learn, heal, and evolve through pure, honest, Socratic conversation.
The Cloister is open-source and runs on an open protocol, which means, by nature, it cannot be locked to any one group of people — anyone technically capable can find and run it. If you are using it without sharing the intention described above, you are welcome to leave. If you choose to stay and use it anyway, you alone are responsible for your own actions, words, and their consequences — not the person who built this room, and not the open protocol it stands on.
The door was left open on purpose, for the people it was built for. Walk in the way you'd walk into a friend's home — carefully, honestly, and with your shoes at the door.