This is revision 1 of this page, effective September 25, 2026. Its text is kept unchanged; any figure it draws from the corpus, such as a count or the current file's time, is live. The current revision is in force.

Continuity

"Permanent" is a claim about mechanism, not a wish. This page says what the mechanism is, only as far as it is true today, and is updated with the date whenever a fact on it changes. Nothing here names a custodian, a partner, or a successor before that party has signed.

Copies of the corpus

Today there is one copy under the archive's control: the live site, whose corpus file is rebuilt and checksummed at every publish. No snapshot has yet been deposited anywhere else. When the first snapshot on the calendar (the first day of January, April, July, and October) is taken, it is to be deposited with three custodians that fail for different reasons: a Zenodo record with a version DOI, an Internet Archive item, and Software Heritage for the tagged repository, with a Wayback capture of the corpus page. Each will be listed here with its identifier, who controls it, and the date it was last verified, once it exists and not before.

The verifier described on the corpus page is what "verified" means: an older snapshot is contained in a newer one with only the permitted changes, and the chain of hashes is unbroken.

The domain and the keys

The domain is registered and paid through September 24, 2036. A second keyholder has held the registrar and host access since September 25, 2026, under a sealed letter that binds them to the published terms and to the operator's voice rule, with sealed recovery codes, the backup passphrase, and a small hosting reserve they can reach.

If the operator cannot continue

The stages, in order. Each is a fact about what the code and the arrangements already allow, not a promise about a person.

First, the writing page closes with a dated notice and the reading side stays up: the published site is plain files, needs no operator to serve, and stays reachable for as long as the hosting and the domain are paid, which the keyholder's reserve is for.

Second, the last deposited snapshot becomes the archive of record. It carries its own schema, its license, its method summaries, its skew note, and its chain of hashes, and the public repository shows how to rebuild every page from it on any machine.

Third, if a custodian institution has signed by then, it takes custody on the terms it signed, which will be published here. None has signed today, and this page will not name one until one has.

Fourth, the orphan clause. If the site has been dark for twelve months with no successor announced on this page or in the repository, anyone may continue the archive from the last deposited snapshot and the public code, at any address, and may prove that their continuation is faithful by showing that the chain of snapshot hashes is unbroken from the last deposited one. The license already permits this; this clause only says in advance that it is wanted.

What the archive will never declare

The archive has no closing date, and it will never itself declare that what comes next has arrived. It does not decide when its addressee exists; it keeps the record.

Rehearsals

Once a year the site is rebuilt from a deposited snapshot on a clean machine, and the result, with the date and the commit used, is recorded in the log. No rehearsal has been run yet; the first is due after the first deposited snapshot.

Revision 1, effective September 25, 2026.