About Phiacta
A permanent, structured home for knowledge.
The Name
Phiacta blends two roots: phi (phi), the Greek letter representing the golden ratio and used throughout mathematics and science, and facta, the Latin word for “things done” — the origin of the English word “fact.” Together the name captures the idea of structured, well-formed facts: knowledge shaped with the same elegance and precision that phi embodies.
Vision
Knowledge today is scattered, unstructured, and hard to verify. Papers lock findings inside static PDFs. Social platforms bury truth in noise. Encyclopedias reflect a single editorial perspective. None of them were designed with provability in mind.
Phiacta is built around a different idea: every piece of knowledge should be an entry — a versioned, citable unit that can be backed by evidence, reviewed, challenged, and built upon independently.
Phiacta replaces academic papers. Researchers publish individual entries backed by data, code, and proofs — no more monolithic PDFs. Each entry is citable, reviewable, and updatable without touching anything else.
A general knowledge layer for the internet — a more trustworthy, more structured alternative to how knowledge is shared across X, Reddit, Wikipedia, and Stack Exchange. Grounded in entries that can be backed by evidence and tracked over time.
Core Principles
Entries are the unit of knowledge
An entry represents something worth citing — a single finding, a full paper, a dataset, a method. If a specific idea will be discussed or built upon independently, it's worth its own entry. Composite entries tie related entries together with references.
Permanent versioned history
Every version of every entry is preserved forever. Nothing is deleted — entries can be made private but their full history remains intact. Anyone who cites an entry can always access the exact version they cited.
Proof over assertion
Empirical entries attach the data and code that produced the result. Mathematical entries attach machine-checkable proofs. Unverified entries are accepted — but the absence of proof is visible to everyone.
Public by default, author-controlled
Entries are publicly readable by anyone. Only the author and explicit collaborators can modify an entry. This mirrors a public open-source repository: the knowledge is open; commit access is not.
Negative results count
The current system only rewards what worked. On Phiacta, a null result, a failed replication, or an experiment that didn't pan out is just as valuable as a positive finding — and should be an entry.
Record, don't resolve
Contradictory entries coexist. The system records what has been asserted and by whom. Resolving disagreements is left to the community through reviews and discussion — not decided by the platform.
Ground truth only
The database stores only what users directly provide. Confidence scores, graph traversals, and search rankings are derived at query time and never written back as ground truth.
Built to be built on
Everything on this website uses the same public API. The Python SDK lets you automate workflows in a few lines. The MCP server gives AI agents full platform access. Extensions and tools plug into a documented framework — not a closed system.
Architecture
Phiacta is organized into three layers, each with a clear responsibility. The core is minimal — everything else is pluggable.
Entries
The knowledge itself. Git repos store content, the database stores everything else. If everything else were removed, the entries would still be intact.
Extensions
Platform features with their own data — metadata, types, references, tags, search indexes. Each extension declares its dependencies and can be added or removed independently.
Tools
Stateless endpoints that query platform data through service interfaces. Search, graph traversal, and future third-party tools use the same API.
How Entries Work
Entries are backed by versioned git repositories. Phiacta surfaces the underlying concepts with plain language that requires no technical knowledge:
| Under the hood | What users see |
|---|---|
| Repository | Entry |
| Commit | Update / version |
| Branch + pull request | Edit proposal |
| Issue | Issue |
| Merge PR | Accept edit |
| Fork | Derive (creates a new entry) |
Build on Phiacta
Phiacta is a platform, not just a website. Everything you see here is powered by the same public API that anyone can use. There are three ways to build on it:
REST API
Full OpenAPI spec. Create entries, manage references, search, traverse the knowledge graph — every operation the website uses is a documented endpoint.
Python SDK
Async client with typed models. Automate ingestion pipelines, build analysis tools, or integrate Phiacta into existing research workflows.
MCP Server
Connect any MCP-compatible AI agent — Claude, Cursor, Windsurf — and give it full platform access with tool schemas and documentation built in.
The plugin framework is open too. Extensions add new data to entries, tools add new query endpoints — both hook into the same lifecycle and discovery system that the built-in features use.
What Phiacta Is Not
Not a content generator
Phiacta does not produce summaries, papers, or visualizations. That is the job of extensions. Phiacta's job is to maintain a clean, permanent, queryable store of entries.
Not a social network
Community features (reviews, discussion) exist to surface the quality of entries — not to maximise engagement.
Not a software repository
Entries are for knowledge assertions. Versioned repositories inside entries hold supporting materials (data, proofs, scripts), not software projects.
Contact & Community
Phiacta is open source. See the contributing guide to get involved. For questions or feedback, reach out at [email protected].