What this site is
Open Specs is a place to publish a protocol, a format or a convention, and to read the ones other people published. Anyone can add one, and nobody has to be let in first.
Your address is a key
There is no account here, so there is none to be given or taken away. An author is a key, and the address of everything they signed is that key written out. A domain expires and changes hands; a key does not, and whoever holds it is the only one who can sign as them.
The documents are not here
They are on relays, which are small servers that keep signed messages and hand them back to whoever asks. This site reads them, renders them and indexes them so a search engine and a link preview can see them. It is the reading room, not the shelf.
The conversation is shared
Other sites render these same documents, and the comments and reactions under them are the same messages, signed the same way. Somebody replying there replies here, with neither site knowing about the other. One conversation, several windows onto it.
You can take it with you
Nothing published here belongs to this site. Another program reading the same relays shows the same document, and if this site stops running the document does not stop existing. The code is open, so anybody can run a reading room of their own over the same relays.
A key is yours to keep
Make one here and it is made in your browser and stays there. There is no reset link, because there is nobody to ask: whoever holds the key is the author. Write it down before you need it.
The protocol underneath
Keys, relays and signed messages are Nostr, which this site uses rather than teaches. If you want the protocol itself, nostr.how walks through it, and nostrapps.com lists the programs that speak it.