lattice — gemtext over Urbit

How it works

lattice is two pieces: a tiny Gall agent on your ship, and a native app you point at it. Drop a gemtext file in your ship's /pub and anyone on the network can read it — instantly, straight from your ship.

the desk

%lattice on your ship

Publishes /pub/*.gmi to the Urbit namespace and serves it to other ships over remote scry. Follows files you subscribe to.

the app

browse & edit anywhere

Android + desktop, one codebase. Reads urb:// pages, edits your own, and gets live notifications when a followed file changes.

# ~nisfeb's notebook Welcome. Everything here is a gemtext file in /pub. => urb://~nisfeb/notes/urbit Notes on Urbit => urb://~nisfeb/now What I'm doing now => https://urbit.org The wider web still works too

What it does

Browse urb:// Fetch and read gemtext published by any ship, peer-to-peer over Urbit's remote scry. No server in the middle — the bytes come straight from the author's ship.
Publish Anything in /pub/*.gmi on your ship is instantly readable by anyone as urb://~you/that/path. Edit it from inside the app.
Built-in editor Write and edit your pages without leaving the app. Plain by default; flip on vim keybindings if that's your thing.
Browser tabs Multiple urb:// pages open at once, Ctrl+T for a new one, bookmarks for the pages you keep coming back to.
Follow & subscribe Follow ships to see what they publish; subscribe to a single file and get a live push the moment it changes — over an Eyre SSE channel, not polling.
Discovery Find other lattice publishers among the ships in your %contacts, via a small manifest each publisher exposes.
Copy to your ship Like a bookmark, but real: pull a remote file down onto your own ship at a path you choose.
Fully themeable Colors and fonts are yours to set. Ships with several built-in themes — Lattice Dark, Light, and more.
Native everywhere Android, Linux, macOS, Windows from one Kotlin / Compose Multiplatform codebase. Desktop builds bundle their own JRE.

What it isn't

Not a host. Bring your own ship — yours, a friend's, or a hosted one.
Not the HTTP web. Pages are Urbit-native (urb://~ship/path) and move between ships over remote scry, not over DNS and HTTP.
Not on the app stores. Sideload the APK and desktop installers from GitHub Releases.
Desktop builds are unsigned for now — Gatekeeper / SmartScreen will warn on first launch and you have to bypass it.

Privacy

The only server lattice talks to is your ship.

No analytics, no third-party SDKs, no telemetry. The app speaks to the Urbit ship you point it at — that's the entire network surface. Your session never leaves the device unencrypted: lattice refuses to send your +code or cookie in cleartext to a remote ship, and stores it owner-only at rest.

Everything you put in /pub is public by design — that's the whole point of a publishing tool. Nothing else on your ship is exposed.

Under the hood

The %lattice Gall agent publishes via Clay → %grow and answers remote scry; the app speaks an authenticated HTTP API to your ship over OkHttp, with live updates on an Eyre SSE channel. Kotlin + Compose Multiplatform for the UI, one shared codebase across Android and JVM desktop. Hoon unit tests on the agent, a JVM test suite on the app, both gated in CI.

android

8.0+ (API 26–35)

desktop

Linux · macOS · Windows · JRE bundled

backend

Your Urbit ship

transport

Remote scry · peer-to-peer

Download

Pick your platform. Direct links resolve to the latest tagged release; fall back to the releases page for older versions and release notes. You'll also need the %lattice desk running on your ship — see the install notes.

Android

Tap the APK; you may need to allow "Install unknown apps" for your browser or file manager. Android 8+ (API 26).

.apk (any) Single universal APK — works on every supported device. Download

Linux

chmod +x the AppImage and run it; needs FUSE 2 (default on most desktops). The .deb installs system-wide on Debian / Ubuntu and derivatives.

AppImage (any) Portable, self-contained. Bundled JRE. Download

.deb (Debian / Ubuntu) sudo apt install ./lattice_*.deb Download

macOS

Open the DMG and drag lattice to Applications. First launch: right-click → Open → Open (unsigned, so a plain double-click is blocked by Gatekeeper).

.dmg Disk image. Bundled JRE. Download

Windows

Double-click the MSI to install. SmartScreen may warn — "More info" → "Run anyway".

.msi x64 installer. Bundled JRE. Download

New to Urbit? urbit.org/overview/running-urbit walks you through booting a ship. Once you have its HTTP URL and +code, log in inside lattice and you're browsing.

Source & issues