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IronShard is S3-compatible object storage infrastructure with governance: agents provision buckets over MCP with no account, work on live forks of production data, and leave a cryptographically signed audit record. The short answer: choose fast.io when the job is agents and people working on files together in a managed workspace; choose IronShard when the job is data infrastructure, meaning S3 tooling, production data forks, per-agent policy, and audit evidence.",{"type":14,"tag":23,"props":29,"children":30},{},[31,33,40],{"type":20,"value":32},"Comparing more providers? 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Agents from Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible client connect to shared workspaces where files persist across sessions, permissions are scoped, sharing is programmatic, and an append-only log records every view, share, token, and change by people and agents alike. It layers in team features such as approvals, human handoff, and file safety controls, and prices by seats and monthly credits. It is a polished product for human-and-agent file collaboration.",{"type":14,"tag":43,"props":282,"children":284},{"id":283},"what-is-ironshard",[285],{"type":20,"value":286},"What is IronShard?",{"type":14,"tag":23,"props":288,"children":289},{},[290,292,298],{"type":20,"value":291},"IronShard is the governed data layer for AI agents: an S3-compatible bucket agents connect to over MCP, with a live fork of production they can safely work on, zero-egress reads by default, per-agent access control, and a signed record of everything they touch. It also runs a public MCP server for object storage, which is how agents provision and operate buckets on their own. Under the hood it fragments, encrypts, and distributes data across multiple storage providers, so no single provider holds a complete file; this is also the basis of its ",{"type":14,"tag":34,"props":293,"children":295},{"href":294},"/docs/gdpr-everywhere",[296],{"type":20,"value":297},"GDPR-everywhere",{"type":20,"value":299}," posture. IronShard is in early access.",{"type":14,"tag":43,"props":301,"children":303},{"id":302},"are-these-even-the-same-category",[304],{"type":20,"value":305},"Are these even the same category?",{"type":14,"tag":23,"props":307,"children":308},{},[309],{"type":20,"value":310},"Mostly not, and the distinction is the decision. fast.io is an application: workspaces, sharing, collaboration flows, and an interface agents use the way a teammate would. 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Its plans are priced per seat and credits. On IronShard, an agent provisions storage with no account at all, calling ",{"type":14,"tag":323,"props":490,"children":492},{"className":491},[],[493],{"type":20,"value":336},{"type":20,"value":495}," on the public Agent MCP server and receiving bucket-scoped credentials.",{"type":14,"tag":23,"props":497,"children":498},{},[499,504],{"type":14,"tag":87,"props":500,"children":501},{},[502],{"type":20,"value":503},"Does fast.io have an audit trail?",{"type":20,"value":505},"\nYes, an append-only log of views, shares, tokens, and changes by people and agents. 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