Setup
Two things, once — and then never again
This page is the whole of what happens before your first case, and it happens exactly one time. It is short because the setup is short.
No account, no invite, no instance, no hosting, no address.
There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to be admitted to. A case travels as a file you hand to whoever you hand it to. Nothing has to stay online for it to keep working — not a server of ours, not a page of yours, not a key published anywhere.
The method used to ask for two published addresses, one for your key and one for the case. Both are gone. An address binds a name only for as long as it answers, and the record outlives the address.
One
Install the skill
The skill is for Claude. Two routes — take the one that matches where you write.
/plugin marketplace add fchinaglia/colophon
/plugin install colophon@colophonTyped in Claude Code itself, not in a terminal: the first line
says where to look, the second installs. It stays current —
claude plugin update colophon takes later releases.
1 download colophon.zip
2 Customize → Skills → Add → colophon.zipThe zip has the skill folder at its root, as required. The download is also the button at the foot of this page.
There is no command to run to check that it worked, and that is deliberate: the phrase that would prove the skill is loaded is the phrase that opens a case, and running it here would start a register you did not want. You will know at the first line of your first article, which is where it belongs.
Two
You do not run the setup. It runs with you.
The first time you say you are about to write — in the chat, to the assistant you were going to write with anyway — it sets you up before anything else, in a short conversation. This step is here so that you know what it will ask before it asks, not because there is anything to do now.
| It asks | Where it ends up | |
|---|---|---|
| your name | required | on the verification page a reader opens |
| a contact email | required | beside your name, so a reader can reach you |
| an ORCID, or a domain | optional | the same place, if you give one. Skip it and nothing is missing |
Both required answers are shown to readers, so the real question behind them is what do you want a stranger to see.
Then it makes your signing key
One key, made once, kept for as long as you use the method. It has two halves and they go to different places:
- the private half — stays on your machine
- Saved at
~/.ssh/colophon. It never leaves that file: nothing uploads it, nothing publishes it, nothing fetches it. Back it up somewhere you will still have in ten years — it is what says a record is yours, and there is no recovering it. - the public half — travels inside every case
- Copied into each case folder when you seal it, so whoever holds your work already holds what checks it.
It is a key, not a certificate — and the difference matters here more than usual. Nobody issued it and nobody vouches for it. It proves that this register was signed by your key, and that nobody without that key has touched the record since; it says the same hand sealed these, never this hand belongs to that person.
The thing that names a person is a qualified electronic signature. It comes from a trust service and not from this setup, it is optional, and it happens at the end of a piece — see the last step of the writing cycle.
Next
That is the setup. The only part you do is the install.
Everything from here on happens once per article, not once ever, and it starts before you write the first line. That order is the one rule of the method that cannot be relaxed: the register is opened when you start writing, not when you have finished.
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