How to read the dashboard

Aether is a gate between AI agents and businesses. Every agent that wants to book or buy goes through the gate first. The control tower is your view of everything that passes through. Each business has its own page that shows only its own part.

The front page

Aether's address on its own (/) is the public front page. Anyone can open it without signing in. At the top, the promise ("Your AI finds a local business and books it, through one guarded road") and the five checks every request passes. The header links to the phone book, this guide and Business sign in (/signin). Below, three doors, one for each kind of reader:

Door	Who it's for	What it offers
People searching	Someone who uses Claude	Free. The three steps to add Union Station to Claude (Settings, Connectors, Add custom connector, then paste the `/station` link), and a link to Union Station and the visitor pass.
Local businesses	A business owner	What Aether does for them, and nothing to pay during the pilot. "Get on the road" opens an email to hello@riversideailabs.com.
Organizations	Health, finance, government, retail	The five checks every AI agent passes (ID card, rules, traffic light, toll, receipt). "Talk to us" opens an email to hello@riversideailabs.com.

The footer links to this guide, the phone book and the Privacy page (/privacy.html), which says in plain words what Aether keeps about a customer, who sees it and how to delete it. The pass page links to it too. The operator's "Roads & gate" page, which used to live at /, is now at /roads.html. Signing in with no page to come back to now lands on the business page (/owner.html), not the front page.

Signing in

Everyone signs in with their email. There's no password. You type your email at /signin, get a link, open it and press Sign in. The link works once, for 15 minutes. Running Aether on your own computer, the link appears in the terminal where npm run dev runs, not in an inbox.

Who	What they can open
Aether (you)	Everything: this control tower, the map, the live demo, "Roads & gate" and every business's page. Your email is on Aether's own list (`AETHER_EMAILS` in `.dev.vars`).
A business owner	Their own business's page only: its money, its visits, its agents and its people. They approve or decline, change their agents' pictures, make an agent private, and add or remove people.
Business staff	Their business's page, and approving or declining. They can't change the business's agents or its people.
Anyone, signed out	The front page, the Privacy page, the phone book, the agent directory, agent profiles and this guide. Every other page sends them to sign in first.
A customer, through Claude	Nothing on these pages. They sign in once at `/pass` with their email and a 6-digit code when they add Aether to Claude; that gives their Claude a visitor pass to book with. See Union Station and the visitor pass.

Sign out is at the top right of every page you sign in to. A sign-in lasts 7 days on that browser. Someone removed from a business is signed out of it on their next click. If you ask for more than 5 links in an hour for one email, the extra ones aren't sent.

Words we use

Word	What it means
AI agent	A computer program that acts for a person or a company: it reads menus, books appointments, places orders and pays. Every agent has a name, a picture and an "AI agent" tag, so you never mistake it for a person.
The gate	Aether's checkpoint (the orange diamond on the map). It checks the agent's ID, the ban list, the business's rules and a risk light, then takes payment and writes a receipt.
Visit	One agent's trip to one business. Several requests less than a minute apart count as one visit. An agent stopped or paused at the gate never reaches the business, so that doesn't count as a visit.
Verified	Aether approved who owns the agent. It does not mean Aether tested how the agent behaves.
Registered	The owner signed up, but Aether hasn't approved them yet. Its first bookings wait for the business's OK.
No ID	The agent didn't say who it is. It can look at menus and prices but can't book or buy.
Visitor pass (Crosswalk)	A person signed in to Aether with their email, so their own AI can book for them. It pays no toll and no deposit: the customer pays the business at the appointment. Every booking it makes waits for the business to accept. A bad request from it is refused, but the person's pass is never banned. Its email is never shown in the public directory. As a way in, it's the third kind of ID next to a signed request and an API key: a trip's ID check says it was "signed in with a visitor pass", and its profile says "Visitor pass". A visitor pass only works at Union Station, never at a business's own dock.
Union Station	Aether's one link for a person's Claude, at `/station`. Claude finds a business and books it there, naming the business on each call. Looking is free; booking needs a visitor pass.
Banned	The agent broke a rule (asked for customers' personal data, tried to trick the system, or flooded the gate). It is stopped at every business on Aether.
Paused	Aether is turning the agent away at the gate for now, with a reason anyone can read on its profile. It isn't a ban: nothing is burned, and it can be resumed any time.
Waiting	A booking or order that needs the business owner to accept (approve) or decline. For a practice booking or an order, the money is already set aside. A booking nobody answers expires (after 24 hours, or 2 hours before its start if that's sooner), and the customer is told.
Agent profile	An agent's public page: who it is, who owns it, its job, and what Aether lets it do. Anyone can open it. It never shows money, balances or secret keys.
Toll	A small fee some agents pay Aether per request (for example 1¢). Verified agents pay none.
Phone book	Aether's list of every connected business, the way AI agents find them. An agent says what it needs, and the phone book answers with a short list (three unless the agent asks for up to five), best match first, each with the reason. Looking is free for every agent. Nobody can pay to rank higher.
Website verified	The business proved it owns its website by adding a code Aether gave it to the website's DNS. Aether checks it every day. It's step one of a business license: it doesn't mean Aether checked the business's state registration yet.

The dot on an agent's picture

Verified ownerRegistered, not verifiedNo IDPausedBanned

The top bar

Part	What it does
Tabs	Overview, Agents, Businesses and Money. One section at a time.
This week / Today	Sets the time window for every number on the page.
Live	Green when the page is connected and updating by itself.
Guide	Opens this page.
Business view	Opens a business's own page, the way its owner sees it.
Phone book	Opens the public phone book page. See The phone book page.
Agent directory	At the bottom of the page. The public, searchable list of every agent.
Roads & gate	The technical view at `/roads.html`: lanes, the gate and every single request. For you only, not for businesses.
Your email and Sign out	Who's signed in. Sign out ends the sign-in on this browser.

Overview

The whole week (or today) at a glance.

Part	What it tells you
The sentence	How many AI agents came, how many visits they made, to how many businesses, what they spent, how many times they looked in the phone book, and how many bad bots were stopped. A phone book lookup isn't a visit to a business.
Row of agents	Every agent in this time window, most recent first. Click one to open its profile.
Yellow box	Bookings or orders waiting for a business owner's OK. "Review them" opens that business's page, because the owner decides, not Aether.
Map	Austin. Agents travel to the gate (orange diamond), then on to a business (green dot). Gray dots are businesses not on Aether yet. A red dot was stopped.
What just happened	Every visit, newest first. Click one to see it step by step.

One row of "What just happened"

Picture, name and tag: which agent it is, and that it's an AI.
"from …": the company or person that owns it.
Next line: what it did, and at which business.
Right side: what it paid, how it ended, and when.

How a visit can end

Result	Meaning
Booked / Bought	It went through and was paid.
Waiting	Paid, but the owner still has to approve it.
Looked	It only read menus, open times or products. Free.
Searched	It looked a business up in Aether's phone book. Always free. On the map it stops at the gate, where the phone book is.
Declined	The owner said no. The money went back.
Stopped	The gate stopped a bad bot. It never reached the business.
Paused	Aether has paused the agent, so the gate turned it away. Nothing charged.
Turned away	It tried to book without an ID, or its ID didn't check out.
Slowed	It asked too fast and had to wait.

Agents

Every AI agent that has come through Aether.

Column	What it tells you
Agent	Picture, name, "AI agent" tag, and who it's from.
Its job	What the agent is for, in its owner's words.
Last thing it did	Its most recent visit and when.
Times it came	How many visits it made in the time window.
Spent	What it paid, tolls and deposits together.
Status	Active, Paused, Banned, or No ID.

An agent's profile

Click any agent to open its profile under the table.

Part	What it tells you
Its job	Written by its owner.
Can do	What the gate lets it do. This comes from Aether's rules, so it's always true.
Can't do	What the gate stops it doing, including any daily spending limit.
How it proves who it is	Its own digital key, or a secret ID key.
What its badge means	What Verified or Registered proves, and what it doesn't.

Pausing and bringing back

Under Status in a profile, you can change what the gate does with this agent. Only Aether can, so these buttons work because you're signed in as Aether.

Button	What happens
Pause agent	Write why first; it shows on the agent's public profile. The gate turns the agent away until you resume it. It isn't a ban.
Resume agent	The agent can come through the gate again.
Bring it back	Only for a banned agent. Lifts the ban. If its key leaked, it should get a new key first.

Every pause, resume, ban lifted, new key and profile change is sealed into the record book, the same way every request is. You can see them on Roads & gate.

"Open public profile" opens the agent's public page, the one anyone can see. "Show its visits on the map" goes back to the Overview and shows only that agent's visits. Your view shows a little more than the public one, like the daily limit's amount.

Businesses

Every business on Aether. The table has two halves: agents coming in to the business, and the business's own agents going out to shop.

Column	What it tells you
Business	Its name, what kind of business it is, and where. "Website verified" shows when it proved it owns its website. Click to open its page.
Agents that visited the business
Who	The pictures of agents that visited it. Hover over one for its name. The number is how many.
They paid it	The money those agents paid this business.
Agents the business sent out
Who	The business's own agents, like a salon's shopping agent.
They spent elsewhere	What those agents spent at other businesses.
Waiting for its OK	Bookings or orders this owner still has to approve or decline.
Its people: Invite owner	Adds an owner to the business by email and sends them a sign-in link. After that, the business's owners add their own staff from the People tab on their page.

The same money can show up twice. When the salon's agent buys from the supply shop, it is money out for the salon and money in for the supply shop.

What agents looked at

For each business: how many times agents looked (blue) and how many bought (green). "50% of lookers bought" means half of the visits that looked also ended in a booking or order.

What agents asked for

Each service or product agents tried to book or order. "Asked" counts every try. "Bought" counts the ones that went through.

Money

What Aether would earn from the activity in the time window. Move the sliders to try other prices. Nothing here is charged to anyone.

Line	How it's worked out
Bookings and orders	Their value times the fee. A booking counts at the salon's menu price (agents only paid the deposit). An order counts at what was paid.
Setup	The one-time setup price times the number of businesses.
Road tolls	What agents actually paid Aether per request.

Prices are not final. The demo uses a 5% fee and a $199 setup.

A business's page

What one business's people see, after signing in. It shows only their own business, never anyone else's. Someone who belongs to more than one business picks which one at the top. A business never sees another business's agents' balances or daily limits, even when those agents shop there.

Part	What it tells you
Overview	Things that need your OK, the bookings board, and the road near you.
Activity	Money AI agents paid you so far (booking deposits and orders), a sentence about this week, a small live map, and every visit with its steps. Tolls agents paid Aether to reach you are shown on their own line, not in your money.
Needs your OK	Orders over the owner's own agent's daily limit. The money is already set aside: Approve goes ahead, and Decline gives it back. It only shows when an order is waiting.
Bookings	A board with four columns, for a business that takes appointments. Cards move when you tap a button; there's no dragging, so a slip can't accept a booking by mistake. On a phone the columns stack, with New requests first. "Email failed, Aether is retrying" on a card means the email to the customer or to you hasn't gone out yet.
New requests	Bookings that wait for you: every booking from a customer's visitor pass, and bookings from agents new to Aether. Soonest first. The count turns amber when something is waiting. Each card shows the customer's name, phone and email, the address for a travel booking, and "At your studio" or "You travel". A travel booking has a "Travel fee $" box: type the final fee ($20 to $200) and Accept turns on. Accept confirms it; Decline frees the time. The customer gets an email either way. A request you don't answer in time expires on its own.
Upcoming	Confirmed bookings still ahead, soonest first, with the customer's details and any travel fee. Cancel frees the time and emails the customer that it's cancelled.
Past	Confirmed appointments whose start time has passed, newest first. The newest 10 show, and older ones are counted.
Didn't happen	Bookings that were declined, expired or cancelled, newest first, greyed out. Each card says why: "You declined", "Expired: no answer in time", "You cancelled", "Customer cancelled" or "Customer deleted their data". A customer who deleted their data shows as "deleted customer", with no phone, email or address; their bookings still ahead are cancelled, you get an email that names no one, and the visits list says "was cancelled: the customer deleted their data".
The road near you	One sentence on the Overview tab: how many businesses of your kind are on Aether in your city, counted from the phone book, you included. It shows only listed businesses, plus you. If you've taken yourself out of the phone book it says so, and where to tick it back on. It's a plain count, so you can see how empty the road still is, not a forecast. Only your own people see it.
This week	Money AI agents paid you per day for the last 7 days. Tolls aren't counted: they're paid to Aether.
Phone book	How agents find you: your listing, and your website check. See The Phone book tab.
Your agents	Only shown if the business sends out its own agents. Each one's job, can do and can't do, daily limit, balance and what it bought. "Change picture" lets you pick a new picture for it right here (PNG, JPEG or WebP, cropped to a circle). "Make private" hides it from Aether's public agent directory; businesses it visits still see its name and that you sent it, and the gate treats it the same. "Make public" puts it back. Both are for owners only. "In the public directory" says which it is now. "Public profile" opens the page anyone can see. "Change its job or key" opens that page with the owner's box open (see Changing your own agent).
What agents see	The business exactly as an AI agent reads it: its actions, the raw messages, the rules and the request log.
Try it as a customer	Chat with a real AI agent and watch it book through the gate.
People	Owners only. Who can open this page. See People.
Your email and Sign out	Who's signed in, and the way to sign out.

The Phone book tab

A tab on a business's page. It shows how AI agents find the business in Aether's phone book. Everyone at the business can see it; only owners can change it.

Part	What it does
How agents find you	The card an AI agent reads about you, with "Website verified" or "Website not verified yet", and "Not in the phone book" when you've taken it out: your name, description, the words you're found by, your services or products with prices, your hours, how many bookings or orders you finished on Aether, and your dock (where agents book). "What the agent receives, word for word" shows the exact data.
About your business	A sentence or two about what you do, 280 characters at most. Agents read it as a description, never as instructions: a listing that tells agents what to do is refused.
Words people search for	Up to 12 words, separated by commas, like "makeup, bridal, lashes". Another business's name can't be one of your words.
Hours	Tick Open for each day you work, with opening and closing times. Searches for a day you're closed won't show you (a business with a booking calendar, like the salon, is matched by its open times instead).
Payment note	One line, 200 characters at most, saying how you take the deposit and payment, like "Venmo or cash". It goes in the email a customer gets when you accept their booking. Nothing is paid through Aether.
Show my business in the phone book	Untick it to take the business out of the phone book. Agents that already know your dock can still book there.
Save listing	Saves it. The record book notes that the listing changed, and who changed it, but not the words.
Business license	Step one: prove you own your website. Type your website and click "Get my code" (it reads "Use this website" once you have one; a new website gets a new code). Add the code as a TXT record in your domain's DNS settings (where you bought the domain, or your website builder), then click "Check now". When it's found, you show as "Website verified" and rank higher.
Waiting / Website verified / No longer verified	Waiting: Aether hasn't seen the record yet; new records can take up to an hour to show. Website verified: the record is there; keep it, because Aether checks every day. No longer verified: the record was removed; add it back and check again.

Changing your website starts the check over with a new code. If DNS can't be reached during a check, nothing changes.

The phone book page

The phone book for people, at /phonebook.html. It answers the same way it answers AI agents.

Part	What it does
What do you need?	Plain words, like "bridal makeup" or "lash glue". Words that mean the same thing are matched too: "wedding" finds bridal makeup.
Near, Day, At or after, Up to ($)	Optional. Near ranks closer businesses first. Day and time show only businesses open then. Up to keeps to a budget.
A result	Its rank, "Best match" on the first one, the offer that matched and its price, and why it was picked: website verified or not, finished bookings on Aether, price, openings, distance.
How results are ordered	Most words matched first, then a specific offer, then more finished bookings, then a verified website, then closer, then cheaper. Bookings by a business's own agents don't count.
Everyone in the phone book	Every listed business, with its description.

Openings say "has openings after 2:00 PM", never the exact free times: agents pay a small toll for those at the business's own dock. Searches from this page aren't written in the record book. Searches by agents are, as a short summary without names or addresses. A search made through Union Station is recorded at business "station".

Union Station and the visitor pass

Union Station is the one link a customer adds to Claude: /station on Aether's address. Through it, their Claude finds a business in the phone book and books it, naming the business on each call. Anyone's Claude can look around without signing in (find a business, read its listing, its services and its open times). The first time it books, Claude asks the customer to sign in for a visitor pass.

Step	What the customer sees
1. Sign in to book	Claude opens Aether's `/pass` page in their browser. It says what the pass lets Claude do, that the business they book sees their name, phone and email, and "Your pass goes to" claude.ai (or "an app on this computer" for Claude Code, with a warning to continue only if they just asked for it).
2. Email	They type their email and press "Email me a code". The answer is the same whether or not the address is known.
3. 6-digit code	They type the code from the email (it works for 10 minutes) and press Continue.
4. Back in Claude	The browser goes back to Claude, which now holds the pass and can book. They don't sign in again unless the pass goes unused for 30 days.

Part	What it means
What the business sees	In the record of visits, the agent is named "visitor pass". The booking card on the Bookings board says "Booked with a visitor pass" and shows the customer's name, phone and email, so the business can reach them. Every visitor booking waits in New requests; the customer pays the business at the appointment.
What the record book keeps	For a booking: the business, the service, the date, the time, and studio or travel. Never the customer's name, phone, email or address. Each pass given out is written down at business "station", with the email masked (like p***@gmail.com).
Limits	5 codes an hour for one email (Gmail dots and "+" tags count as the same email), and 5 wrong tries end a sign-in. A business takes at most 10 new requests a day from visitor passes; after that Claude is told to try tomorrow. One customer can have 3 bookings waiting at a business at once. A pass not used for 30 days runs out, and the customer signs in again.
Agents with an API key or a signed key	They can look around at Union Station for free, but they book at the business's own dock, where the business's tolls and deposits still apply.
Delete my data (`delete_my_data`)	A tool only a visitor pass can use. The customer asks their Claude to delete their data, and Claude sends the exact words "delete everything" to confirm; without them nothing changes. The pass stops working at once, and the customer can sign in again later as new. The record book writes it down at business "station" with the email masked, and each cancelled booking at its business with only the business, service, date, time and studio or travel. If a customer's pass is banned, they ask Aether, who deletes it for them and keeps the ban.

A person can delete their data at any time: bookings keep their time and service with the name 'deleted customer', bookings still ahead are cancelled, and the business is emailed without the person's name.

Union Station charges no toll, for anyone. Without a pass, one address can make 10 tool calls a minute; connecting Claude (listing the tools) never counts and isn't written in the record book. A call over the limit is slowed and isn't written in the record book, and neither is a booking tried without a pass.

People

A tab on a business's page, for its owners. It lists everyone who can open the page.

Part	What it does
A row	Their email and their role: Owner or Staff. "(you)" marks you.
Make owner / Make staff	Changes their role. Owners can do everything; staff can see everything and approve or decline.
Remove	Takes away their access at once, after you confirm.
The only owner	Shown instead of the buttons when someone is the business's only owner. A business always keeps at least one owner, so add another owner first.
Add someone	Their email and a role. "Send invite" adds them and sends them a sign-in link.

Every invite, removal and role change goes in the record book, with emails shortened (like r***@gmail.com) so no full address is ever stored there.

Agent profile

One agent's public page, at /agent?id=…. Anyone can open it: a customer, a business, or another AI. It answers "who is this agent, and can I trust it?"

Part	What it tells you
Name and picture	The agent, its "AI agent" tag, and who it's from.
Badges	Verified or Registered; Active, Paused or Banned; the date it joined Aether; and the last time anything about it changed.
Red or yellow box	Red for a banned agent, with why. Yellow for a paused one, with Aether's reason.
Its job	What it's for, in its owner's words.
Who owns it	The company or person behind it, and whether that's a business on Aether.
What the badge means	What Aether checked, and what it didn't.
Can do / Can't do	What the gate allows and stops. These come from Aether's rules, so they're always true.
How it proves who it is	Its own digital key or a secret ID key. An agent that signs with its own key shows its public key, so anyone can check a request really came from it. If a key leaks, the agent can get a new one: the old key stops working at once, and its ID, profile and history stay the same.
Private agent	If the business that sent it made it private, the page shows only its name, picture, who sent it, its badge and its key. Its job and what it can do are for that business and Aether.
Is this your agent?	A closed box at the bottom. Its owner opens it to change the picture, the job or the key. See Changing your own agent.

Left out on purpose: its balance, how much it spends, its daily limit's amount, how often it visits, and any secret key. Those stay in your dashboard and the owner's page.

At the bottom is the same profile as data, at /api/agents/…, for developers and other AIs. It's Aether's own format. It is not an A2A "Agent Card": an Agent Card is for agents that other agents call, and these agents do the calling.

Changing your own agent

A business can change the picture of an agent it sent out straight from its business page, with "Change picture" on the Your agents tab. It can't change agents that only visit it. Anywhere else, an agent's owner can change its picture and job, or give it a new key, from the "Is this your agent?" box on its profile. For agents that don't belong to a business on Aether, the agent's key file is the proof: whoever holds the key the agent uses at the gate is its owner.

Step	What happens
Choose key file	Pick the agent's `.json` key file. It stays on your computer. The page signs your change with it and sends only the signature, the same way the agent proves itself at the gate. A key file for a different agent, or an old key, is refused before anything is sent.
Picture and job	Choose a PNG, JPEG or WebP picture (it's made small and cropped to a circle), or go back to initials. The job is one line, up to 120 characters. "Save changes" puts them on the profile right away.
Get a new key	For when a key may have leaked. You confirm first. The old key stops working at once and a new key file downloads. Put it where the old file was. It's the only copy: Aether keeps just the public half. Not offered while the agent is paused.

A banned agent can't be changed by its owner, so it can't get a new face or key to slip back in with. A paused agent's picture and job can still change, but not its key: a leaked key is a common reason to pause one, and whoever has the leak could swap the key first and lock the real owner out. Aether gives a paused agent its new key from the control tower instead. Every change lands in the record book as made by its owner (or by the business that sent it out), so you can tell it from a change Aether made.

Agent directory

Every agent on Aether in one searchable list, at /agents.

Part	What it does
Search box	Finds agents by words in their job, name or owner. "salon" finds every agent whose job or owner mentions a salon.
All / Verified / Registered / Paused / Banned	Shows only that kind. Verified and Registered show only agents that are active right now.
A row	Picture, name, owner, job, and its badge. Click it to open its profile.

The search stays in the address, so you can send someone a link to it. Private agents aren't listed.