The engine
Timeline Protocol
The alternate reality game the doors open into. Built, deployed, and run live at public events since 2026 — not a prototype and not a pitch.
A player scans a door and the story starts unlocking on their phone — no app, no account, nothing to install. Just scan, pick a side, and see how far it goes.
How it plays
Scan a door and the story starts unlocking on your phone, right there on the street. Pick a side early on and it colours what you're shown from then on. We're not spelling out the rest here on purpose — that's what makes it worth playing live at timelineprotocol.com.
Why it's built this way
No app. An install is where 90% of an audience is lost. A tag opens a URL in the browser they already have open.
No account. Nothing to sign up for, nothing collected, nothing to leak. Progress lives on the device.
Three ways to scan. NFC tap, QR camera, or type the code. An older phone, a cracked camera, a bad angle in a dark bar — none of it locks someone out.
Static site, no backend. React and Vite, deployed as flat files. It costs almost nothing to run, survives a venue's terrible wifi, and cannot go down because a database did.
Free, permanently. Public art that costs money to see isn't public art.
What we can measure
Most public art can't tell you whether anyone stopped. Tags can.
- Scans per door — how many people stopped rather than walked past
- Dossier opens — how many went on to read about the artist
- Click-throughs to artists' own pages — attention delivered to the artist, not to us
- Route completion — how many walked a whole neighbourhood
- Return scans — who came back
For a host venue, that's a footfall number with a name on it. For a funder, it's evidence instead of adjectives.