Welcome
The one-paragraph answer to 'what is HeartBadge' — and where to go next depending on who you are.
HeartBadge is a membership protocol built around a single, durable object: your badge. A badge is the thing you take home when the weekend ends — the memento that proves you were there, carries your status across events, holds rewards you can actually send to other people, and keeps working whether or not you have signal. These docs describe what a badge does today, what it will do next, and how operators and developers build on top of it.
Three audiences, one protocol
Almost everyone lands here as one of three people. Pick the closest match and the docs will take you somewhere useful in one click.
- I have (or I'm getting) a badge. Go to Members. Everything in that section is live today and written in present tense. Start with "What Is a Badge" and work down; or jump straight to the thing you need — activating, balances, sending rewards, redeeming a gift code.
- I run an event, club, festival, or community. Go to Programs. HeartBadge can be the infrastructure underneath your membership, not a separate product your members have to think about. The overview tells you honestly whether it's a fit.
- I'm building software. Go to Developers. Start with the architecture overview so the API reference makes sense, or jump straight to Mint your first badge.
How these docs are organized
Every page belongs to one of three rings. This is the rule that keeps the docs honest.
- Ring 1 — Core Heartbeat. Shipped and load-bearing. Written in present tense, no qualifiers. The Members section is all Ring 1 — it describes what you can actually do today.
- Ring 2 — Next Pulse. Designed and in active development. Grouped under Coming Soon, and inline pages are marked with a clear "Rolling out" tag when they mix into other sections.
- Ring 3 — Horizon. Architecturally designed, not yet in member hands. You'll find the overview at What's on the Horizon. No how-to guides for Ring 3 — just the picture.
If you ever land on a page that reads like a how-to for something you can't actually do yet, that's a bug in these docs. Tell us at docs@heartbadge.com.
Want the story before the spec?
The short version of why we built HeartBadge lives on Our Story. It takes about three minutes to read and explains why the word we use is "memento," not "membership."