VOLTAreference

Reference / Connect and share

Invite someone to Volta

Connect and share

Open in the workbench →
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Volta is in a private beta, so making an account needs an invite. An invite is a link you send to one person; they open it, sign in with GitHub or Discord, and they are in. If the server you are on gives members invites of their own, you can hand them out from the workbench.

Hand out an invite#

Open COMMUNITY ▸ invites in the workbench. The tab is there when you are signed in and the server gives members invites; it says how many you have left:

2 of 3 invites left

Type who it is for (optional — it is a memo for you, and it is shown to them on the invite page), press new invite, and a card appears. The card is headed by what the invite is for (for: a friend, or no note), and carries the link itself as selectable text, its state, when it expires, and the code:

for: a friend
https://volta.fm/i/7Kq2xR4mNp08
unused · expires in 30 days · code 7Kq2xR4mNp08

copy link puts the link on your clipboard (its tooltip is the exact line it copies). Send it to one person. When they take it, the card says so — @ada joined — and the invite is spent.

Each invite lets exactly one person make an account. It expires after 30 days if nobody uses it.

Get a slot back#

withdraw stops a link working — one you have not sent, or one you sent to somebody who never used it — and returns the slot to your quota. It asks first: the button becomes confirm withdraw, and only the second click does anything, because the link may already be in somebody's inbox. An invite that was already taken cannot be withdrawn — the account it opened is theirs, and taking the link back would not change that. An invite that expires unused also returns its slot.

So a quota of 3 means three outstanding at once, not three ever.

Being invited#

Opening an invite link shows who invited you, the note they typed attributed to them (@ada says: come make noise), what accepting does — "Accepting opens the workbench in your browser. Nothing to install." — and one button per sign-in provider the server offers, above a line saying the buttons are two doors into one account. That page carries no other navigation: no workbench link, no sign in corner, because both of those answer "you need an invite" and make the invite look optional. Accepting signs you in and makes your account in the same step; your @handle is claimed from your provider login at that moment and never changes afterwards (Share music and collaborate §Signing in).

If a link does not work, the page says which of these happened:

what it sayswhat to do
already been used upask for a fresh one — somebody else took it
has expiredask for a fresh one
was withdrawnask whoever sent it
isn't one we knowcheck you copied the whole link

Once you are in, you stay in. The invite is spent creating your account, and your account keeps working on its own afterwards — you never need the link again.

Notes and limits#

  • Members always create single-use, 30-day invites. The length and the number of uses are not adjustable from the workbench. An operator running the server can create multi-use and never-expiring codes through an admin-only route (those cards read never expires).
  • Invites are secrets. Anyone holding the link can use it, so the invite page is never cached or indexed, and a code is readable only by you (in your own list) and the operator. Treat it like a password until you have sent it.
  • A server can switch member invites off, in which case the invites tab is not shown at all and only the operator can let people in. That is a server ANSWERING quota 0. A GET /api/invites that fails — a 500, an unmigrated database, a service that is not reachable — is not an answer, so the tab stays and reads couldn't load invites — retry. Until 2026-09-21 any failure silently deleted the tab, which is how a missing D1 migration read as "this server has no invites".
  • Nothing about invites is offline. The tab needs the community service and a signed-in session, like the rest of COMMUNITY.
  • There is no invite tree on profiles yet. Who invited whom is recorded, but no page shows it.
  • Volta does not send email. Delivering the link — a DM, a message, saying it out loud — is up to you.

Next steps#