Subdomain Repurposing

Every site puts its “contact” or “careers” or “help” page somewhere different. What if the verb went in the URL itself - the same verb on every site - and the address bar became a tiny command line?

Subdomain Repurposing turns the subdomain into an action. Type a verb followed by a domain, hit return, and the system looks the verb up in an action database, identifies the right server, and performs the action. No more hunting through navigation menus.

contact.example.comopens example.com's contact form
careers.example.comopens example.com's jobs page
help.example.comopens example.com's support page
contact.example.com verb . domain Action database contact → /contact careers → /jobs help → /support example.com performs the action the same verb works on every site that adopts it
The address bar becomes a tiny command line: verb + domain takes you to the action.

Why it's useful

One vocabulary, many sites. A small set of standardised verbs - contact, careers, help, login, pay - works the same way wherever you type them. You stop hunting through unfamiliar navigation. Muscle memory transfers between sites.

Fewer steps to the obvious things. Most visits to a website are looking for one of a handful of common pages. Putting those behind a verb collapses two or three clicks into one keystroke.

Accessibility win. For users on screen readers or keyboard-only navigation, a predictable verb is far less work than navigating a menu tree that changes shape on every site.

Voice-friendly. “Help dot example dot com” is something you can actually say. Most URLs are not.

How it works

The patent describes a method that takes a command split into an activity portion (the verb) and a domain portion (the site). The activity is looked up in an action database to determine the operation; the domain is used to identify the server; the operation is then carried out on that server. The action database is what makes the same verb portable: each site declares what its verbs map to.

Title
Subdomain Repurposing
Inventor
Nigel Hamilton
Priority
22 October 2021
Filed
12 October 2022 · PCT international application
Published
WO 2023/067301 A1 · 27 April 2023
Read it
patents.google.com / WO2023067301A1
PDF (full specification)

An action layer on top of the web

This isn't a tweak to one site - it's a layer. The current web is a layer of documents: pages you read. Subdomain Repurposing adds a thin layer of actions: a shared vocabulary of verbs that any site can opt into and that work the same way everywhere they appear.

Once that layer exists, the address bar starts to behave like a command line for the entire web. Users learn one small set of verbs and apply them to any domain. Sites publish their own action databases the way they publish a sitemap. Browsers, voice assistants and accessibility tools can build on the same primitive. The web stops being a forest of bespoke navigation and starts having a verbs API.

Anyone with a domain name can adopt it without changing how the rest of their site works. The verbs become a quiet protocol that sits on top of everything that's already there - small to implement, large in what it makes possible.

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