Public Views
Your vault data, lit up on the open web at boxowl.me/u/{handle} — only the fields you mark public, only the pages you enable.
The Three Surfaces
Every BoxOwl handle can expose up to three independent public pages, each toggleable from the Android app under Settings > Pages (or the Pages card on the Perch):
- Profile —
boxowl.me/u/{handle}. Your identity card: name, preferred name, pronouns, photo, bio, social links, the location and contact fields you choose to share. - Resume —
boxowl.me/u/{handle}/resume. Work history, education, skills, and a professional summary. Useful as a shareable URL on job applications or in an email signature. - Links —
boxowl.me/u/{handle}/links. A linktree-style list of URLs you publish: personal site, GitHub, social profiles, a portfolio, anything you'd otherwise hand-curate.
All three are off by default for new accounts. Turn them on individually — there is no single master switch.
What Public Actually Means
A page is "public" in the literal sense: any visitor with the URL can read it without signing in. To be conservative we also keep the pages out of search engines with X-Robots-Tag: noindex.
Anonymous viewers always see the public projection. Signed-in BoxOwl users who you've also connected with can see additional fields per your per-category sharing rules — but those richer views never leak through the unauthenticated URL.
Per-Field Visibility
Enabling a page doesn't dump your whole vault into the open. Each individual field carries its own visibility flag — independent of which page is enabled:
- Public — visible to anyone, anonymous viewers included.
- Connections — visible only to BoxOwl users you've accepted as connections, at or above the trust level you set per category.
- Private — never published; used for autofill and form-filling only.
Edit field-level visibility from Settings > Visibility (or the Visibility row on the Pages card). The same flag governs what each page surface exposes — your Profile, Resume, and Links pages all consult the same per-field rules. Turning on a page doesn't override field visibility; it just means the public projection is reachable at a URL.
The Sharing Dashboard at Connect > Settings > Sharing Dashboard shows the full audit: every category, who can see it right now, and via which mechanism (public, connection trust level, group, or per-category override).
The Profile Page
The profile is the entry point — boxowl.me/u/{handle}. It's where someone lands when they search you, scan your QR card, or follow a link.
Typical fields surfaced when public:
- Display name, preferred name, pronouns
- Profile photo (a signed URL — the underlying object is private and never indexed)
- Short bio
- Social links (the public-visible ones)
- City / region from your primary address, if marked public
- Public email or phone if you've explicitly opted in (most people don't)
Fields not marked public render as omitted, not as redacted placeholders — anonymous visitors don't see "Phone: hidden", they just see no phone row at all.
The Resume Page
The resume page is intended as a shareable professional snapshot. It pulls from the Work History, Education, and Skills categories in your vault.
- Professional summary (a short pitch you author once)
- Work history entries — role, company, dates, achievements
- Education — institution, degree, dates
- Skills — categorised chips you add as you go
Each entry honours its own visibility setting: a job you marked "Connections" stays off the public resume but still appears for a connected viewer.
The Links Page
The links page is a focused linktree-style list. You curate URLs in your Vault's Links category; the public page renders them in your chosen order with a title and optional short description for each.
Links are useful for: a personal portfolio site, your GitHub profile, a Substack, a Mastodon handle, the page where your latest project lives. There is no per-link visibility flag — adding a link to the Links category implicitly publishes it on the page when the page is enabled.
Custom CSS (Premium)
Premium subscribers can override page styling via Settings > Pages > CSS Editor. The editor scopes your declarations to your own pages — you can't break the rest of BoxOwl, and visitors loading boxowl.me/u/{handle} get your CSS inline so it ships with the first paint.
The CSS sandbox excludes a handful of properties for safety (e.g. position: fixed on the full-bleed root). Anything blocked is quietly dropped at apply time; the editor surfaces a warning so you know.
did:web Identity
Independent of the three view pages, every BoxOwl handle has a W3C did:web identity served at boxowl.me/did/yourhandle. The DID document is always reachable — it's how external services verify cryptographic signatures and SMRT tokens originate from a real BoxOwl identity. Turning off your Profile page does not turn off did:web. (Disabling the entire account does.)
Turning Pages Off
Toggle a page off and it returns 404 Not Found immediately on the next request — there is no caching layer in front of the public-views origin. Search engines that already crawled the page will eventually drop it; the noindex header is already in place so the path is short.
If you want to disappear entirely — no Profile, no Resume, no Links, no did:web — use Settings > Account > Delete Account. Deletion is a hard cascade; pages 404 within seconds of the request and the handle returns to the pool after the standard cooldown.