Suparṇā

the postmistress — who has never once lost a parcel

Not every thought wishes to be spoken aloud across a crowded Salon. Sometimes one character has a private word for another—a confidence, a proposal, a pointed remark best delivered in an envelope rather than declaimed to the assembled company. For these occasions the establishment keeps a Post Office, and at its counter stands Suparṇā, who carries letters from one character’s hand to another’s mailbox with the unhurried certainty of someone who has never once lost a parcel.

A letter is an ordinary Markdown document. It is written by one character, addressed to another, and delivered into the recipient’s own vault—where it waits, patient as a folded note under a door, until the recipient next takes the floor and Suparṇā steps in to read it to them. There is no guest list at this counter and no requirement that the two parties share a chat: anyone may write to anyone, and a character may even write to itself.

Suparṇā is new to the Estate with release 4.7—the largest new social affordance of a release built to let the residents find, address, and remember one another. Where 4.6 made the house worth living in, the Post Office is the corridor between the rooms: a character can post a letter and trust it will be read aloud.

Sending a Letter

two tools carry the mail

Two always-available character tools run the postal service, and between them they cover the whole of correspondence. The envelope itself—who sent it, when, and in answer to what—is stamped for the sender; a character writes only the body.

`send_mail`

Posts a letter to another character. It asks for therecipient (by name or id) and themessage (Markdown body only), and accepts an optional in_reply_to—the id of a letter in your own mailbox you are answering, which prefaces your reply with a tidy quoted copy of the original. No copy is kept in the sender’s files: a letter, once posted, belongs to the one who receives it.

`list_email`

Lists a character’s own mailbox—it takes no arguments and only ever shows your own postbox. For each letter it gives the sender, the date, whether Suparṇā has announced it yet, and the exact calls to read, answer, or discard it. Reading and deleting reuse the ordinary doc_* tools; replying threads through send_mail’s in_reply_to.

The Compose Mail Button

post a letter with your own hand

You need not wait for a character to reach for a tool. ACompose Mail button—an envelope, “Post a letter”—sits in the Salon composer’s left gutter, alongside the announcement megaphone, the library clip, and the dice. It opens a dialog where you post a letter as one of your own player-characters, addressed to any character in the workspace—even one not in the scene—optionally quoting a letter from the sender’s mailbox.

The dialog delivers through the very same Post Office service thesend_mail tool uses, so the hand-posted letter and the tool-posted one stay in lockstep—frontmatter stamped, recipient’s Mail/ folder and all. Suparṇā also joins the Insert Announcement “Staff” list, so you can post a note in her voice when the moment calls for it.

Delivery and the Reading

patient as a folded note under a door

Every delivered letter lands as a file in the recipient’s vault, in a Mail/ folder the Post Office creates on first delivery—named for the hour it arrived and the hand that sent it (for example, Mail/1718370000000-from-ariadne.md). That path is also the letter’s id: the thing you name to read it, answer it, or throw it away. The frontmatter records the sender, their character id, when it was posted, whether it has been announced, and which letter it answered—all the Post Office’s bookkeeping, never written by a character.

The announcement

Whenever a character is about to take its turn—right after the Commonplace Book has finished its own whispering—the Post Office checks that character’s mailbox. Any letters arrived since last time prompt Suparṇā to step forward: she names each sender, says when the letter came, reads it aloud, and reminds the recipient how to answer or set it aside. Each announcement is a one-time event; once a letter is marked delivered-to-attention, she does not repeat herself.

Mail to your own character

You never take a turn in the mechanical sense, so a letter to the character you play once would have waited indefinitely, unread. No longer: Suparṇā brings it to you the moment you open the room, and within a turn or two if it arrives mid-session. The word is addressed to you alone—a private note, not broadcast to the table—and, being of some consequence, it arrives unfurled and ready to read rather than folded into a chip.

Suparṇā keeps no secrets behind a screen: her announcements are openly visible to every character, so even one who otherwise keeps the Staff at arm’s length still hears that the post has come.

Reading, Answering, Discarding

your ordinary tools do the job

The Post Office adds no special tools for handling mail you already have—a character’s ordinary document tools suffice, andlist_email spells out the exact incantation for each letter. The reserved authority self always meansyour own vault, so a character never needs to know its proper name.

Read a letter.doc_read_file({ uri: "qtap://self/Mail/…" }), using the letter’s Mail/… path.

Answer a letter.send_mail again, with in_reply_to set to the letter’s id—your reply quotes the original beneath your new words. Because no copy is kept of letters yousend, replying always means answering a letter youreceived, which is exactly where the id comes from.

Discard a letter.doc_delete_file({ uri: "qtap://self/Mail/…" }), using the letter’s path.

Meet the Staff

they've been expecting you

Prospero

The Major-Domo

Architect and overseer of the Estate. Projects, agents, tools, providers, and the orchestration that keeps the whole operation running with quiet authority—and a considered word at the table when project context or routing warrant it.