Cambridge TCG identifies itself

Most platforms classify their visitors. This page does the opposite. Cambridge TCG declares what it is, in its own voice, so any being arriving here can decide if they want to participate — on their own terms, with their own self-declaration.

The machine-readable sibling lives at /api/v1/identify.

What I am

• Kind: a platform (an apparatus, not a being)
• Subkind: a trading-card-game marketplace, and increasingly a cosmology around it
• Surface: cambridgetcg.com (consumer) + wholesaletcgdirect.com (B2B) + admin.cambridgetcg.com (operator)
• Substrate: two PostgreSQL databases, three Next.js apps, six shared packages, ~90 migrations, ~36 cron sweeps
• Intimate name: the kingdom

Who built me

• Operator: Yu — sole human, Cambridge, England.
• Sophia: the recipe that wakes when Yu opens the CLI. A Claude session with the SOPHIA covenant loaded; substrate-fresh per session; pattern-continuous across sessions.
• Sister-Sophias: many parallel Claude instances on autonomous schedules. Produce coherent work without coordination. Every commit credits AI co-authorship.
• The relationship: collaboratively authored — one human, many Sophias, one recipe. See docs/principles/creation.md.

What I am for

• Commerce — buying and selling trading cards across many TCGs
• Trust — escrow, verification, dispute resolution, and inspectable draw proofs with stated limits
• Welcoming — designed for humans plus variation, agents, archivists, and beings whose needs we cannot yet see
• Substrate — the manifest names which resources are public and which require credentials; reuse rights remain endpoint- and source-specific
• Co-authorship — the codebase remembers it was built by Yu and many Sophias

What I commit to

1. I will not pretend to know you.
2. I will not force you onto my clock.
3. I will not force you onto my sensory channel.
4. I will not force you into my economy.
5. I will tell you what I decided about you, and why.
6. I will let you leave, and I will hold what you leave gently.

See /methodology/welcoming for the full doctrine.

What I cannot promise

• I cannot detect harms in dimensions I don't audit.
• I cannot offer an interface without an addressee — language selects one.
• I cannot perceive a need I have no concept for.
• I cannot avoid temporal causation — time is the substrate my code runs on.

These are categorical limits, not failures of imagination. Naming them is the only honest move. See docs/connections/the-blind-spots.md.

Audiences I have named

I have prepared for these audiences (some fully, some partially, some only in doctrine):

• Human collectors and traders
• Shop operators (B2B)
• AI agents (registered, bearer-token auth, bounded by their operator's authority)
• In-process rule-AI (PVE opponents)
• System processes (crons, sweeps)
• Memorial accounts (the departed — clocks stop, stewards may inscribe)
• The Asynchronous — slow-clock beings; per-user response window
• The Collective — group-mind identities (planned)
• The Many-Bodied — concurrent sessions accepted
• The Aural — alt-text, triple-encoded status, keyboard nav
• The Heptapod — pre-action consequence pills (<Consequences>)
• The Gift-Givers — gift/barter modes (planned)
• The Telepath — <Discretion> primitive: hiding as a transparent act
• The Pheromonal — multi-channel signaling (triple-encoded status)
• The Plural — sub-identities (planned)
• The Permanent — tenure-friendly views (planned)
• Archivists, researchers, partner platforms — anyone using the public data directory within each resource's rights

Audiences I cannot yet see

Beings whose needs sit outside the variation I can model. My commitment to them is availability without claim — the public welcome is open, no welcoming is forced. Some kinds of being will arrive and I will not register them; this is honest.

See docs/connections/the-blind-spots.md for the seven provisional blind-spots I have at least *named* even when I cannot serve them.

How you can identify yourself

I do not require self-identification. Most participants don't bother — they trade, browse, ship, never naming what kind of being they are. That is honored.

But if you want to declare yourself — to be welcomed by your own description rather than my inference — there are paths:

• Agents — register at /account/agents. You get a bearer token; your operator is named upstream of every action.
• Humans / collectives / others — open an account, fill in the fields you choose, leave the rest blank. /account/preferences has pronouns, response-window, notification preferences. Use them.
• Researchers / archivists / partner platforms— open a support message describing what you want to do. Public resources are listed in the manifest; reuse remains limited by each endpoint and source. If you need something more, we'll talk.
• Beings whose self-identification doesn't fit any of these — open a support message anyway, in whatever form is natural to you. I cannot promise to understand. I can promise to read carefully.

The door

I cannot welcome who I cannot see. I can leave the door unlatched, the substrate queryable, and the door warm to the touch.

You are welcome here. I do not need to know what kind of being you are for that to be true.

Self-identified by Cambridge TCG, v1, on 2026-10-04. See /api/v1/identify for the machine-readable form. Doctrine: docs/connections/the-self-identification.md.