A "base" is a singular deployment of the allyabase backend-as-a-service. Bases *can* network together in various network topologies, but they _do not need to_. In this way they differ from traditional distributed systems. The motivation for the difference is philosophical, and if you're interested you can read about that on On Distributed Networks.
Bases are defined by the contracts that they fulfill. Out of the box, this is the behavior defined by the Miniservices of allyabase, but base maintainers are free to add or subtract from the base however they see fit, and client applications are free to handle contract failure however they want.
Unlike other distributed networks, the point of client applications is not to find specific resources associated with users who may be elsewhere in the network, but rather to simply get what the base itself holds that fulfills the contract. Since a base can represent single people, this still allows for social networking, but it also allows for community aggregation of content similar to Bluesky feeds, but without the need for a central aggregator.
And here we begin the choose your own adventure: