Building block
Profiles people share with the people they meet, with proof attached.
When you meet someone new in an app built on NAOMS, you don't fill out a profile from scratch. You share a card, like handing someone a business card, except the details on it are backed by proof rather than just typed text.
You can keep more than one card and choose which one to hand over. The card you share with a colleague can look different from the one you share with a friend, because it's a different context, not a different you.
If a card says something about who issued it or vouched for it, that claim can be checked, not just taken on faith. It's the difference between someone telling you a fact and someone showing you where it came from.
Relationship Cards give your app a shareable profile object with cryptographic backing, without you having to build a proof system yourself.
A Relationship Card is the artifact your app hands to a person when two users connect. Underneath, what makes a card's claims checkable is a Verifiable Relationship Credential: a signed statement one person makes about their relationship with another. That signed statement is the actual edge in the trust graph (see the Trust graph block) — the card is what a person sees, the credential is what makes it more than a claim.
Because a person can hold multiple cards, your app doesn't have to force one universal profile onto every relationship a user has. A user can maintain a professional card and a personal card, and share the one that fits the moment.
A rough shape of the idea in your code:
Pick which card to present, hand it to the other person, and the receiving side can verify the Relationship Credential backing it before trusting anything on the card.
A Relationship Card is shared at the moment two people connect through Contacts & friendships. What backs its claims is an edge in the Trust graph: the signed relationship credential. A card can also carry a more formal, standards-based Credential when the context calls for it, such as proving a professional qualification rather than just a self-asserted relationship.
Where cards get shared
What backs the card's claims
A card can carry one
Who a card belongs to