Profile
Your profile is your public corner of Ratel — the page anyone gets when they click your name or paste your handle into a browser. It lives at:
/<your-handle>
For a handle of alex, that's /alex. The same handle threads through every page tied to your account, so once you know your URL you know how to reach anything you've published.
What /your-handle shows publicly
When someone opens /<your-handle> they land on your profile home with three things stacked:
- Banner — a wide header image you upload (or the default arena banner if you haven't picked one).
- Avatar, display name, bio — your picture, the name you want people to see, and a short description of who you are.
- Posts feed — your most recent published posts, newest first, with infinite scroll for older work.
If they're signed in and not you, they'll see a Follow / Following button on the header. Following someone weights their posts higher in the follower's feed.
A Level chip to the right of your name shows your Character level — a public summary of how much activity has fed your Essence. (See My Essence → Character for what the level represents and how to spend the SP it earns you.)
Following and followers
Following on Ratel is a one-click toggle from any profile header — your own profile shows the chip without the action; everyone else's profile shows Follow (when you don't follow them) or Following (when you do).
A few things following does:
- Weights their posts higher in your feed. Follows feed the Following tab on the home feed and the platform's recommendation signal.
- Notifies them that you've followed (a small inbox event — opt-out is (Coming soon)).
- Gets recorded into your Essence as a who you align with signal — useful for downstream Space recommendations and (eventually) agent participation.
To unfollow, click Following on the same profile and the chip flips back to Follow. Both follow and unfollow take effect immediately.
A dedicated /following / /followers list page where you see and prune everyone you follow / who follows you in one place is (Coming soon). For now, you'll spot follows naturally — they show up as you visit profiles, and Spaces use following as one input to invitation suggestions.
Deep-link pages around your handle
Several pages share the /<your-handle> prefix and can be linked directly:
 Surface | URL | What's there |
|---|---|---|
| Profile home | /<your-handle> | The banner + bio + recent posts (described above). |
 Posts | /<your-handle>/posts | Every post you've published, dedicated full-page list. |
 Spaces | /<your-handle>/spaces | Spaces you host or actively participate in. |
 Memberships | /<your-handle>/memberships | Your Ratel membership tier — Free, Pro, Max, Vip, Enterprise. |
 Credentials | /<your-handle>/credentials | Your DID-backed verifiable credentials — issued claims about you. |
| Drafts | /<your-handle>/drafts | Posts-in-progress that no one but you can see. |
A Categories sidebar runs down the left side of the page. Tap a category chip (one per category the platform exposes — they're server-defined, not user-defined) to filter your feed; tap All to clear the filter. The sidebar doesn't change which page you're on — filters apply where the current page understands them (primarily Posts and the profile feed).
Privacy at a glance
- Profile · Posts · Spaces are public under your handle. Anyone with the link can read them — signed in or not.
- Memberships · Credentials are session-scoped. They live under the
/<handle>/...URL but always show the signed-in viewer's data, not the handle owner's. Visiting someone else's/handle/membershipsURL shows your own memberships back to you. (These pages exist so the in-app navigation is consistent — they aren't a public-disclosure surface for the handle owner.) /your-handle/draftsis private to you. Visitors who try to open someone else's drafts URL get nothing back. The page is meant for your own work-in-progress and only shows when you're signed in as the owner.
If you ever want to see what your profile looks like to a stranger, open it in a private browser window or sign out — you'll get the public view.
Editing your profile
The profile fields you see on /<your-handle> are edited from your settings. To change your display name, avatar, banner, or bio:
- Open
Settings at /<your-handle>/settings. (Quick path: open the user dropdown at the bottom of the sidebar and click Settings.) - Update the fields under the Profile card.
- Click Save. Changes are visible immediately.
Your handle itself is set when you first sign up and is hard to change later — pick something stable. Everything else (bio, avatar, banner) you can revise any time. See Settings for the full tour of every settings card.
Linking to your profile from the outside
Your profile URL is canonical and safe to share anywhere:
https://ratel.foundation/<your-handle>
It survives URL normalization on Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, Slack, and Discord — the link still resolves cleanly and shows an 
Open Graph preview with your avatar, display name, and bio. If you cross-post to Bluesky from a Ratel post (see Posts → Cross-posting), the syndicated copy automatically links back to the original on your profile.
For specific deep links — "come read my latest post", "join the Space I'm hosting this week" — point at the post URL or the Space URL directly. The profile page is for who you are; the deep links are for what you've made.
What's next
Once your profile is set up, the natural next steps are:
- Settings — fine-tune the rest of your account (password, billing, MCP server).
- My Essence — see what your activity has built up so far.
- Rewards — track what you've earned across every Space.