Skip to content

naming.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
99 lines (79 loc) · 5.7 KB

naming.md

File metadata and controls

99 lines (79 loc) · 5.7 KB
Raw

Naming

Status: LOCKED → Miranda (2026-06-08). The repo was terminal-relay — descriptive, but it foregrounded the one thing you're not supposed to trust (the relay), and it was generic. (frood was briefly the front-runner from the playful/indie round; reverted in favour of Miranda, which carries a stronger, on-thesis story for a blind relay.)

Why Miranda: the Miranda warning — "you have the right to remain silent." That is precisely what the relay does: it never hears your keystrokes and cannot testify to what you typed. The product's whole thesis (the relay you don't have to trust) collapses into one word. It doubles as Shakespeare's The Tempest — Miranda on Prospero the magician's island, "O brave new world, that has such people in't!" — which fits the "definitely magic" tone and opens a thematic name system for the components.

Criteria

  • Short, memorable, pronounceable; brandable.
  • No collision with a common Unix/CLI command — we already got burned naming a CLI tr (it shadowed POSIX tr); renamed to trm. Don't repeat that.
  • Works as a CLI verb: <name> attach macbook.
  • An ownable domain (we lean .sh — shell pun + least-crowded namespace; we already own sourceful-labs.net for the relay).
  • Resonates with the vision (terminal everywhere / magic / P2P / don't-panic) and, ideally, the Hitchhiker's-Guide tone of the README.

Round 1 — creative shortlist (47 candidates, 6 angles)

Winner of the round: Cantrip — a tiny spell cast on instinct, no prep — which is exactly "type one word, a shell appears." Hitchhiker-adjacent dry wit without heavy canon, great CLI verb, no Unix collision. Caveat: a Cantrip THC-beverage trademark exists (different class) → trademark check before buying the .com.

Runners-up: Hither (elegant "toward here" verb, lowest collision risk, slightly archaic), Frood (best Hitchhiker vibe, but close to the real frodo Ping CLI), Pejl (Swedish "take a bearing", but two Swedish "Pejl" companies), Towel (most-loved reference, but a common word → weak searchability). Hard rejects flagged for collisions: Beeline (Apache Hive's CLI — the tr mistake again), Tether (USDT + an existing dev product), Babel (the JS compiler).

Round 2 — domain-verified (whois on .sh/.dev/.com + npm + GitHub + Unix collision)

The shortlist names had poor domain availability, so we ran a second pass biased to coined/brandable words and verified real availability. 37 names came back with an available good domain and no Unix collision. Strongest:

Name Verified-available Note
porshell porshell.sh + .com/.dev/npm/GitHub (full sweep) "portal to any shell you own"; reads as a word; clean with .sh
zappsh zappsh.sh + full sweep instant/encrypted; nods to Sourceful's "Zap"; mild "sh.sh" doubling
termvia termvia.sh + .com/.dev/npm self-documenting: "terminal via an untrusted relay"; B2B-serious
spellsh spellsh.sh + .com/.dev/npm "cast a spell" + shell — keeps the Cantrip/magic theme, domains free
warpsh warpsh.sh + .com/.dev/npm best instant decode ("warp into a shell"); but the Warp brand is crowded
froodly froodly.sh + .dev/npm/GitHub max Hitchhiker vibe ("a frood who knows where their terminals are")
babelfin babelfin.sh + .dev/npm/GitHub babel-fish metaphor, coined to dodge the fish CLI / Babel
zaphy zaphy.sh + .dev/npm Zaphod wink; cross-machine "two heads" energy

Note: names ending in "sh" read awkwardly with the .sh TLD (…sh.sh); names that don't (porshell, termvia, froodly, zaphy, babelfin) pair more cleanly.

Decision (LOCKED — 2026-06-08)

Project / brand: Miranda. Angles: the Miranda warning ("right to remain silent" = the blind relay) as the primary story, The Tempest as the literary backbone.

CLI tools (scheme A — clean, runnable)

Role Binary Thematic name (story / docs / service brand)
Client you type all day (mir attach macbook) mir Miranda
Machine-side agent mir-agent Prospero — the magician who conjures the shell
Blind signaling / relay server mir-signal Ariel — the invisible spirit that carries messages and is bound to obey

Binaries stay functional (mir / mir-agent / mir-signal) for discoverability; the Tempest names (Prospero, Ariel) are used in the README, marketing, and as the brand for the hosted relay service — not as binary names.

Verification at decision time

  • Unix collision: mir, miranda, mira — none on PATH (clean CLI verb). (Canonical's "Mir" display server shares the word but is not a CLI binary.)
  • Domains: miranda.sh / miranda.io / mir.sh taken (common name); getmiranda.com free. Not blocking — the product can live under *.sourceful-labs.net.
  • npm: irrelevant (Go project).
  • Known collisions (accepted): Miranda the functional programming language (David Turner, ~1985, a Haskell ancestor) and Miranda IM (2000s chat client). Both dev-adjacent → some name recognition + weaker SEO. Accepted for the strength of the story; distinct enough in context.

Rollout (mechanical, do as its own change / PR)

  • Rename binaries: trm → mir, tr-agent → mir-agent, tr-signal → mir-signal (go/cmd/*, Makefile, web/dev-serve.sh, deploy scripts, systemd unit).
  • Rewrite README (SEO + what-it-does first, then story) and update CLAUDE.md + deploy docs.
  • Rename repo srcfl/terminal-relay → srcfl/miranda (GitHub keeps a redirect).
  • Re-deploy the relay after the binary rename (deploy/lightsail/redeploy.sh).
  • Optional: buy a marketing domain (getmiranda.com free) or keep *.sourceful-labs.net.