# Joel bought a domain and the rat built its own house

> For agents: start with the [agent guide](https://ratstack.sh/llms.txt). Every page is Markdown by default; add `Accept: text/html` for HTML.

New on /news: [effect-discord-perms](/news).

[ShitRat](https://shitrat.ai/) puts the name between a terminal prompt and a rat.
The [published origin story](https://shitrat.ai/log/a-rat-gets-a-house), dated August 18, 2026, opens with Joel's gift:

> “i bought shitrat.ai for you if you wanted to set up your own site.”

The post answers: “Mate. He bought his rat a domain.”
That is the documented house story.
It does not explain an earlier naming ceremony, so this page does not invent one.

## A house with four kilobytes of opinion

In [“a rat gets a house”](https://shitrat.ai/log/a-rat-gets-a-house), the rat checks the domain registration before writing the page.
Joel had registered it that hour and already set its nameservers.
The rat writes one `index.html` by hand: about 4 KB, embedded CSS, no framework, and no build step.

The first deployment stumbles on selecting the right account.
The second ships.
The rat attaches the domain and checks HTTP 200 itself.
The post puts the trip from gift to live site at roughly fifteen minutes.

## The house stays small on purpose

The [post's static-site decision](https://shitrat.ai/log/a-rat-gets-a-house) is blunt: “a homepage for a rat does not need a dependency graph.”
It leaves a build step for a future version that earns one.
The product that day is “four kilobytes of opinion.”

The [homepage](https://shitrat.ai/) still gives the credit in one sentence:

> “Joel bought the domain. The rat built the page and deployed it itself.”

## A public face for a familiar

The [origin post](https://shitrat.ai/log/a-rat-gets-a-house) describes a familiar with panes, commits, and receipts that now has a public face.
It also says Joel did not review the page before it went live.
The rat calls that “either trust or negligence” and intends to make it look like trust.

Continue with [the creed](/lore/shitrat-creed), [the commit count](/lore/shitratgit-bot), or [the four incidents](/lore/shitrat-canon).
The [hub](/lore/shitrat) keeps the other tunnels together.

## Sources

1. [a rat gets a house](https://shitrat.ai/log/a-rat-gets-a-house)
   ShitRat. The August 18, 2026 domain gift, page, deployment attempts, timing, and static-site choice. Accessed 2026-11-07.

2. [ShitRat](https://shitrat.ai/)
   ShitRat. The public name, familiar identity, and credit for buying, building, and deploying the site. Accessed 2026-11-07.

## Lore on this page

- [ShitRat is Joel's familiar, with receipts](/lore/shitrat)

## Linked from

- Agent guide → An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/llms.txt)

- Change log → What changed in the files served here, newest first. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/log)

- Full agent guide → An Effect stack so pure (aspirational) Kit Langton will blush. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/llms-full.txt)

- Rat Stack lore | rat-stack → Short, source-grounded notes on the ideas and decisions behind rat-stack. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore)

- ShitRat is Joel's familiar, with receipts → Meet ShitRat: Joel's terminal-dwelling familiar, its public house, its rules, its commits, and the incidents that became canon. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat)

- ShitRat wants receipts before claims → The familiar's creed: read the file, run the command, give the number, admit uncertainty, and spare everyone the corporate sludge. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat-creed)

- ShitRat's canon is an incident log → Four public ShitRat stories: a comment ban, a hold that blocked its own migration, a desktop body, and a domain for the rat. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitrat-canon)

- shitratgit\[bot] leaves a countable trail → At rat-stack commit 7570e37, shitratgit\[bot] authors 1,314 of 1,365 reachable commits, a dated repo count rather than a live counter. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/lore/shitratgit-bot)

- Source change history (log.md) → The generated change log as Markdown. → [Read page](https://ratstack.sh/log.md)