description: The neutral party behind an @name — an account, a defined identity, or anyone simply mentioned. tags: glossary maturity/experimental references:

• plugs/index/identity.ts
• libraries/Library/Std/APIs/Identity.md
• server/src/handlers/accounts.rs

An identity is anyone or anything addressable with @name, or an “at mention.” Identities are used in two contexts:

1. Recipient
2. Authorship

Where identities come from

Accounts

Everyone with access to the space is an identity, addressed by their account username.

API-defined identities

Anything addressable that is not an account, but you’d still like to use as an identity, can be registered with identity.define:

identity.define {
  name = "sales",
  description = "Sales team",
}

Now @sales completes, shows “Sales team” beside it, and collects mentions in the Mention Inbox like anyone else. Because this is an ordinary Space Lua API, a library can register its own identities.

Ad-hoc names

If you @mention any identity that’s neither an account nor API-defined identity, this will work as well. However, you will only get auto-complete for it once you’ve used it once.