The Local Internet Stack · part of One Local Internet
WHAT ARE THE LAYERS THAT MAKE ONE LOCAL INTERNET WORK?
One system powers many local experiences. The Stack is the vertical view of that system: the layers that sit between an authoritative record and the page a person opens.
One system powers many local experiences.
What are the layers that make One Local Internet work?
LocalInternetStack.com is a second address into this same experience. One system, multiple legitimate entry points: the same page, the same architecture, and one canonical public identity at TheLocalInternetStack.com.
THE STACK
Read top to bottom: what a person opens, down to the object it comes from. Select a layer to see what makes it real.
One system powers many local experiences.
Every layer below describes something the running application does today. Where a concept is not yet built, it is listed separately as not production architecture rather than drawn as a layer.
ONE OBJECT THROUGH THE STACK
A conceptual illustration. No business, count or placement below is read from the system.
- Step 1Records and information
One authoritative Business Record, held once.
- Step 2Shared structure
Placed in the existing geography and categories.
- Step 3Governance
Claimed, verified, and published for a recorded reason.
- Step 4Platform capabilities
Served through shared search, publication and owner management.
- Step 5Operating workflows
Maintained through the same lifecycle everywhere.
- Step 6The Grid
Carried to the destinations it legitimately belongs to.
- Step 7Surfaces and experiences
Appears across legitimate local surfaces.
One Record. One System. Many Surfaces.
Nothing is copied to travel up the Stack. The same object is structured, governed, served, distributed and presented — a surface is never on its own a reason to publish something.
STACK, GRID AND SURFACES
What the system is made of. Vertical layers.
How the system reaches many destinations. Horizontal distribution.
What people experience.
Domains are addresses, not a layer of the application stack. The Namespace explains what the names are for; the Stack explains what runs behind them.
What layers make the system work?
What names exist and what roles do they represent?
What capabilities does the system provide?
How are those capabilities operated and governed?
What is connected?
How does the connected network fit together?
What user-facing experiences exist?
What is the overall ecosystem?
An authoritative object may legitimately appear on several surfaces. Which URL, domain or surface should be canonical for indexing is still an open policy question, and the Stack does not decide it.
WHAT THE SYSTEM ACTUALLY RUNS
- Production layers
- 7
- Deployed surfaces
- 365
- User-facing surfaces
- 350
- Configured destinations
- 284
Layers on this page, each describing something the running system does today.
Distinct experiences this application serves. Several addresses can share one.
Deployed surfaces that present records to people, excluding explanation pages such as this one.
Rows in the Surface Registry — places an object can legitimately be published to.
Each figure is counted from the running system when this page rendered and says what it counts. Domain and registrar status is held outside the system and is neither counted nor inferred here.
NOT PRODUCTION ARCHITECTURE
- AI citation infrastructure
- AI visibility infrastructure
- Autonomous agents
- MCP endpoints
- Knowledge graphs
- Citation namespaces
- Public APIs and machine integration
- Marketplace nodes
These concepts appear in earlier Local Internet strategy material. None of them operates in the running system, so none of them is drawn as a layer here. If one is built, it earns a layer then.
CARRIED FORWARD
Retained
Retained — it is the correct idea and it is the whole page.
Retained, with the layers rewritten to describe what actually runs.
Retained, and it is the production architecture rather than a diagram.
Retained and sharpened: Stack is vertical layers, Grid is horizontal distribution.
Not carried forward
A roadmap of a separate project, not the architecture of this system. Layers here describe what operates today.
No knowledge graph exists in this system. Records, categories, places and relationships do — and they are the Shared structure layer.
No agent reads or writes anything here. Not presented as production architecture.
No public API or MCP surface operates in this system, so no integration layer is drawn.
Not implemented. Publication is governed placement, not citation infrastructure.
The destination model has no marketplace object. Subject and intent surfaces are the honest equivalent and TheLocalSurfaces catalogues them.
No scoring exists, and projected endpoint counts are targets rather than architecture.
Ownership framing from a separate site; this page's job is explaining the layers.