# Accounts: provisional and claimed

The two kinds of account a program can create, what a claim link does, and what happens to pages nobody claims.

## Provisional accounts

A create call without `email` makes a provisional account: no e-mail, no password, reachable only with the API key that came back. A program may put up to ten pages on it, and its pages are public at once.

The response carries a **claim link**. Whoever opens it sets an e-mail and a password and the account becomes theirs — pages, statistics, keys and all. Someone who already has a Tapmy account can open the link while signed in and attach the pages to that account instead.

- A claim link is valid for 30 days. `POST /api/agent/claim-link` with the key issues a fresh one and voids the old.
- The API key keeps working after the claim. The owner sees it in the dashboard under *API keys* and can revoke it.
- `GET /api/claim/<token>` answers `{ "status": "pending" | "claimed" | "expired" | "invalid" }` — a program can poll it to learn when the owner has taken over.

## Accounts with an e-mail

Send `email` and `password` (8+ characters) with the create call and the account is a normal one from the first second: the person logs in at `/login` with those credentials. No claim link is issued. Use this when the person has told you their e-mail and asked for an account; never invent one.

## Adding pages to an existing account

With `Authorization: Bearer <key>` the same create call adds a page to the key's account and returns no new key or claim link. A program may create at most ten pages on an account; the eleventh answers `403 limit_reached`. The owner can add more by hand in the dashboard, which has no ceiling.

## What happens to pages nobody claims

| Age of a provisional account | Condition | What happens |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 30 days | unclaimed and no page has had a single view | pages are unpublished (the address answers 404) |
| 60 days | still unclaimed and never viewed | pages, files, keys and the account are deleted; the names become free again |
| any | claimed, or viewed at least once | nothing — the page is somebody's |

A page that was created and then shown to nobody was an experiment; an experiment does not get to hold a name forever. A page with one visitor is treated as real.

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Part of the [Tapmy.link agent documentation](https://tapmy.link/documentation/agents.md). Canonical: https://tapmy.link/documentation/agents/accounts.md