After eight years, sempods is public

[haed]

After eight years, sempods is public

In 2016, I started building what became eventer: an alternative to Facebook for public events.

The original idea was still a business idea. But the frustration behind it was deeper: public event data was locked inside platforms that had no real interest in giving it back.

I wanted this data to exist in a better form.

Open. Addressable. Reusable.

In 2018, after joining Staffbase, that business idea slowly turned into something else: a non-profit conviction.

The question stayed with me:

Why does using software so often mean giving your data to whoever wrote the app?

Over the years, the answer became sempods.

A pod is a place where data can live independently from the apps that use it. Data has its own address. Its own meaning. Its own permission boundaries. Apps can work with it. Agents can work with it. But it does not have to disappear into someone else’s platform.

For a long time, this felt like swimming against the current.

Then AI happened.

Suddenly, everyone needs context. Agents need access to calendars, notes, events, tasks, messages, documents, relationships, memories. The easiest path is obvious: hand everything to the company running the model.

I do not think that should be the default future.

AI makes sempods feel less like an architectural idea and more like missing infrastructure. Data sovereignty, data security, and machine-readable meaning belong together.

And what surprised me most over the last year: AI seems to understand this model almost natively. My own prototypes, apps, and MCP integrations work better than I expected.

That changed something for me.

Today, I am making the sempods ecosystem public: the concept, the specification, the vocabulary, and the reference implementation.

Freely available. Open to use, adapt, criticize, and copy.

Not because it is finished.

Because it is time.

Start here

• Website: https://www.sempods.org
• Specification: https://spec.sempods.org
• Vocabulary: https://schema.sempods.org
• Apps: https://apps.sempods.org

Some early conversations and initiatives are already starting to form around sempods. More on that soon.

For now, I mostly want people.

If you want a pod to test with, or to build something real, write to me: hello@sempods.org. There is no signup flow yet. It is still a conversation.

If you have an idea and wonder whether sempods fits, bring it.

If you disagree with the premise, bring that too.

Eight years is a long time to think about something mostly alone.

I am curious what happens now that the idea is finally out in the open.