In flight · 2022
Local Universe — The multiplayer layer of the internet
The multiplayer layer of the internet
A browser client that puts other people on the page with you — proximity voice, live cursors, and comments anchored to anything on the site. Works on pages nobody built it for.
- TypeScript
- WebRTC
- Spatial audio
- Browser client
Why
The web is the biggest shared space we have and you are alone on every page of it. Everyone you know might be reading the same article, watching the same stream, or stuck on the same checkout, and none of you would ever know.
Every attempt to fix that has meant getting the site to add it. That does not scale — there are too many sites, and none of them are going to build you a voice channel.
How it works
The client draws a layer over whatever page you are on and connects you peer-to-peer to everyone else standing on it. Audio is spatial, so a conversation across the room stays out of the way until you walk into it.
Comments anchor to elements rather than to URLs, so they survive the page moving around underneath them, and they land on sites that have never heard of us — YouTube, Netflix, Twitch, Wikipedia, Notion.
Ghost Mode is the important half of the feature. Being visible everywhere by default would be a surveillance product, so presence is something you switch on.
Where it is
Live, and the longest-running thing here — 50,000+ people and 20,000+ sites connected.