.. _introduction:

============
Introduction
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:ref:`Embassy<embassy>` is a new kind of personal computer - one that sits quietly on your shelf and runs all day and night. It has no screen and no keyboard. You access your Embassy from anywhere in the world in total, trustless privacy, simply by visiting its unique Tor address (.onion URL) right from the browser.

Embassy is composed of commonly available hardware components that can be sourced and assembled by anyone, anywhere, for a marginal fee. Embassy is powered by :ref:`EmbassyOS<embassy-os>`, the open-source operating system by :ref:`Start9<start9>`.

So, what do you do with your Embassy? You use it to run services: Bitcoin, Lightning, personal cloud storage, P2P messaging, password management, etc. The list of available services is growing quickly and will eventually encompass the entirety of open-source, self-hosted software.

Every communication between you and your Embassy is end-to-end encrypted and onion routed over the :ref:`Tor network<tor>`. All services are open-source and self-hosted, meaning there are no trusted third parties of any kind.

To get an Embassy, you can :ref:`purchase<purchasing>` one directly from Start9, or you can :ref:`build one yourself<diy>`.
