Every request, signed.
messh gives every developer, and every agent they run, a name that resolves to keys anyone can check. The mark is the tool behind those checks: a nib, the thing that signs.
What it says.
- 1The nib
- The tool that signs. An ed25519 key signs every SSH login; messh puts a signature on every agent request (RFC 9421).
- 2The keyhole
- A real nib’s breather hole, drawn as a keyhole. Only your private key fits, and it never leaves your machine.
- 3The outline
- Stood upright, a nib is a shield: signed and protected in one shape.
- 4The tile
- An Edwards curve,
x² + y² = 1 + 0.9·x²y². EdDSA, the algorithm behindssh-ed25519, is named after this family of curves. At d = 0.9 it is almost exactly the shape of an Apple app icon.
The tile is the math.
Edwards curves run from a circle (d = 0) to a square (d → 1). In between, they are squircles.
Dashed: the n = 5 superellipse commonly used to approximate Apple’s icon mask. In v11 the same curve shapes every card, field, tile and avatar, through corner-shape: superellipse(2.32). ssh-ed25519 itself uses the twisted form, −x² + y² = 1 + d·x²y², over a finite field; the tile is its drawable, real-number cousin.
Light, dark, clear, tinted.
Shipped as layers, so the system adds the mask, the blur and the highlights for each appearance.
Every size.
At 32px and below a small cut takes over: no collar, a bigger keyhole, a wider slit.
The seal.
Inside the product the nib appears without its tile in one place only: next to a signature that was checked.
Lockup.
Wordmark in SF Pro Display Semibold at −2.5% tracking. Keep half a tile of clear space all round; don’t go below a 20px tile.
- Don’t redraw the nib or move the keyhole.
- Don’t swap the curve for a plain rounded rectangle.
- Don’t use the bare nib as decoration: it means “signature checked”.
Files.
Everything lives in brand/logo/.
| messh-icon.svg | Web, docs, marketing. The light icon on its Edwards tile. |
| messh-icon-dark.svg | Dark appearance: graphite tile, blue-white nib. |
| messh-icon-clear.svg | Clear appearance: frosted tile, white nib. |
| messh-icon-tinted.svg | Tinted appearance: grayscale, the system adds the tint. |
| favicon.svg | Browser tabs and anything 32px or smaller (small cut). |
| icon-composer/background.svg | Icon Composer / Xcode background layer, full-bleed. Dark: background-dark.svg. |
| icon-composer/glyph.svg | Icon Composer foreground layer: the nib alone, flat. Small: glyph-small.svg. |
| png/messh-appicon-1024.png | App Store master: full-bleed and opaque; the system applies the mask. |
| png/apple-touch-icon.png | iOS home-screen bookmark, 180px, opaque. |
| png/messh-icon-1024.png | PNG renders at 1024, 512, 256, 128 and 64; 32 and 16 use the small cut. |
| messh-glyph.svg | The nib alone in currentColor, for UI and print. The seal is built from it. |
| messh-lockup.svg | Icon + wordmark. Dark backgrounds: messh-lockup-dark.svg. |
