Membranes

What is Membranes and what is it for?

Membranes is a reusable Holochain zome module that lets a group define, while the app is running, the processes by which people join or leave the group and gain or lose privileges in it. It exists so those membership and permission rules can belong to the group and change over time, rather than being settled once when the app is built.

Membranes is a module for Holochain, written by the makers of the Membranes repository, Lightning Rod Labs. It is not an app someone installs and opens; it is a piece that a developer builds into a Holochain application. What it holds is the group's own membership rules: who may join, who may leave, and who gains or loses privileges inside the group.

The point of the module is that those rules are set at runtime. A group using an application that includes Membranes can define and revisit its own processes for joining, leaving and changing privileges as it goes, instead of treating them as something settled once by whoever wrote the application. In plain terms, the group decides how its door opens and closes, and can change its mind later.

The repository also carries Tasker, described in its README as a basic task management app used as a playground for trying out Membranes' features. Developers set up the project's Holochain tools with the setup script in the repository, then run the playground with `npm install` and `npm run devtest`; the README is the place to start reading.

From 2 public sources, checked 23 September 2026.