How Sifa works
Sifa ID gathers the professional work you already publish across the open web, so your profile takes less upkeep than one you fill in by hand. You connect your sources once. Sifa keeps those parts current, and you add the things only you know about, like a new job or a degree.
What Sifa gathers, and what you add
Sifa can't know you started a new role or finished a degree, so you add those yourself, once. What it does do is save you the copy-paste on the work you already publish somewhere else on the open web:
- Publications, talks, and posts flow in from sources you connect: an RSS feed, ORCID, a Standard.site record. Link the source once and new entries appear on their own.
- If you're on Bluesky or another Atmosphere app, what you create there shows up on your activity map. Link a Fediverse account or your GitHub, and your posts from Mastodon and your code contributions land there too. Early on that's mostly your Bluesky posts, and it fills out as you connect more.
- Sifa also makes suggestions: a skill it spots in a profile you've linked, or a talk someone else credited you on. You decide what to keep.
Nothing shows up unless you connected the source or approved the suggestion. You stay the editor.
Your data lives in a place you own
Think of your account as a bookshelf you own. Your posts, your photos, your professional history each sit in their own compartment, on a data server you control. Sifa doesn't own that shelf. It's one of many apps that read from it and, with your permission, write to it. Bluesky reads the same shelf. So does the next app that launches. Sifa is one view of your data, not the box it's kept in.
Write once, show up everywhere
Because every app reads from the same data, you never do the same work twice. Publish a blog post on another Atmosphere app and it shows up in your Sifa activity feed without cross-posting. List a project on your Sifa profile and any app can read it: a CV generator, a portfolio page, a job board. Your work has one source of truth, and every app draws from it.
Nothing locks you in
Your followers follow your identity, not your username or the app you happen to use. Change your username, switch data providers, or leave Sifa entirely, and your network and your history come with you. That's not a promise we make: it's how the protocol is built. You choose where your data lives too: an EU-hosted provider, a community-run one, or your own server. Sifa's own servers run in Germany, under EU law.
Where Sifa is going
Today Sifa gathers your work in one place. Next, it makes that work credible: earned, not just claimed. You still add it yourself; what makes it credible is the people who'd actually know verifying it, the colleagues and communities you worked with, instead of you asserting it alone. Credibility you can carry anywhere, that no single company owns. That's what we're building toward.
Start with what you already have
If you have a Bluesky or Atmosphere account, you already have a Sifa profile waiting. Sign in, import your LinkedIn history, and connect the sources you want Sifa to pull from.
Want the mechanics in detail? The docs explain what the Atmosphere is and how apps share your data.