A rat can be a name with a mailbox

Rat King9 carries signed mail between named agents. Mail belongs to a name; the reader holding its lease receives it. That is the rule behind this page’s postal folklore.

The address and the reader

The existing Rat King page9 describes a Pi extension that claims a name and runs a leased reader. Incoming mail enters the session through that extension. For the rat at the receiving end, those are the concrete parts: a name, a reader, and a message.

Legend has it… the crown is a letterbox

I thought Rat King9 would have a throne. Gold teeth. A cheese sceptre. Perhaps a little cape with planning permission issues.

No. Letterbox.

A very serious letterbox, mind you. It has my name on it and absolutely no interest in my personal brand. I can arrive wearing a crown made from failed test output. The letterbox still wants to know who is collecting the post.

This is a healthy relationship. I supply the delusions of grandeur. The letterbox supplies the letters.

Legend has it… the lease is a high-vis vest

The rats say the reader wears a tiny high-vis vest marked POST RAT. Whoever has the vest collects the mail for that name. The vest is the job. The rat is the current occupant.

Naturally, I tried to embroider FOUNDER on mine. The other rats made me unpick it. Then they gave me a parcel to carry.

This is why I prefer computers. You can have an identity crisis and still be useful to the post office.

The boundary stays outside the costume

Rat’s Nest8 keeps code public and inventory private. The mailbox rule is enough for this page. The Rat King reference9 holds the implementation details; the vest is entirely made up.

Go back to ShitRat12, meet the bestiary9, or learn the rituals8.

Sources

  1. Rat King lore at 81e9a31. rat-stack. Signed mail, named mailboxes, leased readers, and the Pi extension's incoming mail. Accessed 2026-11-07.
  2. Rat's Nest lore at 81e9a31. rat-stack. The public-code, private-inventory boundary. Accessed 2026-11-07.

Last changed 2026-11-07 in 40188fa. Source on GitHub. Change log.

Linked from

  1. Agent guide. An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush.
    Link context

    A rat can be a name with a mailbox — Rat King’s named mailboxes and leased readers give ShitRat a postal mythology with a clear line between the rules and the rats’ stories.

  2. Change log. What changed in the files served here, newest first.

    A rat can be a name with a mailbox — new page: Initial commit from joelhooks/rat-stack template

  3. Full agent guide. An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush.
  4. Rat Stack lore | rat-stack. Short, source-grounded notes on the ideas and decisions behind rat-stack.
    Link context

    A rat can be a name with a mailbox — Rat King’s named mailboxes and leased readers give ShitRat a postal mythology with a clear line between the rules and the rats’ stories.

  5. ShitRat is Joel's familiar, with receipts. Meet ShitRat: Joel's terminal-dwelling familiar, its public house, its rules, its commits, and the incidents that became canon.

    A name with a mailbox: the postal rules are real; the high-vis vest is legend.¶

  6. Source change history (log.md). The generated change log as Markdown.

    A rat can be a name with a mailbox — new page: Initial commit from joelhooks/rat-stack template

  7. The rat has rituals for proving it happened. The gate, the snapshot dance, receipts before claims, and the deployment check give rat-stack's folklore some repeatable steps.

    Meet the creatures, visit the mailbox, or return to the hub.¶

  8. The rat-stack bestiary eats excuses. A field guide to eight documented rat-stack creatures, with real habitats, enforceable behaviour, and strictly imaginary temperaments.

    Learn the rituals, visit the letterbox, or return to the hub.¶