CommonGround Ecosystem — Consolidated Overview
Version: 1.0
Date: 2026-04-19
Status: Supersedes resource_commons_prds.md and coordination_governance_prds.md as the strategic frame. Those files remain in /docs as historical drafts.
Decomposition
Seven originally-proposed projects were consolidated into five after a systems, primitives, and product-maturity review. One project absorbed two others; two were merged into a single economic layer.
| # | Survivor | Absorbs | Ships |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CommonGround — structured deliberation + constitutional governance + liquid delegation | FlowState (now: delegation-graph visualization + cross-space federation as CG features), Co-Op OS governance module | First. commonground-prd.md is mature and ready to spec. |
| 2 | Kindred — attestation-based gift ledger. Records circulation of care and contribution; does not rank persons. See kindred-design-principles.md. | original Kindred (care credits) + Co-Op OS treasury (surplus distribution) | Second. PRD needs ~1–2 days of consolidation before spec. |
| 3 | Equip — physical-asset library | unchanged | Third or fourth (community demand drives the pick vs WikiForge). |
| 4 | WikiForge — open hardware design repo | unchanged | Third or fourth. |
| 5 | Synapse — democratic planning engine | unchanged | Last. Depends on real data from 1–4. |
Dissolved: Co-Op OS as a separate product. Absorbed: FlowState as a separate product.
Why consolidate
CommonGround absorbs FlowState + Co-Op OS governance
FlowState’s signature features — topic-based delegation proxies, Git-like proposal versioning, a delegation graph visualization — are already implicit in CommonGround’s liquid delegation + civic memory model. Making them visible and cross-space is a CommonGround feature, not a new product.
Co-Op OS’s governance module (quadratic voting, steward selection) is CommonGround configured for worker-coop defaults. That’s a governance profile (Phase 3 of the existing CG roadmap), not a new product.
Kindred absorbs Co-Op OS treasury — but NOT portable reputation
Two of the three originally-proposed surfaces survive:
- Time-banked care credits (original Kindred) — kept, reframed as gift records with demurrage.
- Surplus distribution (Co-Op OS treasury) — kept. Coop accounting is not a social credit system.
One is retracted: the Co-Op OS “portable 5-star reputation.” Portable records of completed work are fine. Portable ratings are a social-credit architecture and are explicitly rejected. See kindred-design-principles.md for the full design constraints — ten binding principles derived from Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics and Hyde’s The Gift that prevent Kindred from becoming a ranking system.
Sybil-resistance and proof-of-personhood still live in Kindred, but only to ensure attestations are genuine — never to compute a score.
Equip, WikiForge, Synapse stay separate
Each has a domain-specific primitive that doesn’t collapse into the others:
- Equip — physical assets with IoT (resource + location + durability state).
- WikiForge — versioned design artifacts with repair-scorecard metadata.
- Synapse — multi-objective optimization over needs and ecological thresholds. Strictly downstream.
Stack shape
┌────────────────┐
│ Synapse │ planning (last, depends on all below)
└───────┬────────┘
│ needs data from
┌────────────────────┼────────────────────┐
│ │ │
┌───────▼──────┐ ┌───────▼──────┐ ┌───────▼──────┐
│ Kindred │ │ Equip │ │ WikiForge │
│ credits/rep │ │ asset library│ │ hardware repo│
└───────┬──────┘ └───────┬──────┘ └───────┬──────┘
│ │ │
└────────────────────┼────────────────────┘
│ all depend on
┌───────▼────────┐
│ CommonGround │ governance primitive (first)
└────────────────┘CommonGround is the foundation. Kindred, Equip, and WikiForge each attach to it via the governance primitive (Issues, Perspectives, Decision Records, liquid delegation). Synapse sits on top of all of them.
Five primitives shared across the stack
Recognized during the human-architect-mindset pass:
- Identity — a persistent, revocable, exportable sense of “who.”
- Decision — Issue + Perspective + Decision Record.
- Delegation — visible, time-bounded, revocable capability transfer.
- Attestation — mutually-signed claims (care given, surplus distributed, reputation earned).
- Resource Record — a describable, trackable physical or informational thing.
Products compose these:
- CommonGround = Identity + Decision + Delegation
- Kindred = Identity + Attestation + Delegation
- Equip = Identity + Resource + Decision (for governance of the asset pool)
- WikiForge = Identity + Resource + Decision (for governance of the design graph)
- Synapse = Resource + Decision + Attestation across time
The primitives live in CommonGround’s reference implementation; the other products consume them.
Build order (summary)
- CommonGround v1 — 3–4 months per its existing roadmap. Spec ready today.
- Kindred v1 — after CommonGround phase 1 is real. Requires PRD consolidation first.
- Equip v1 OR WikiForge v1 — pick based on community signal; both need PRD refinement.
- Federation layer — cross-space delegation (was FlowState) + cross-instance Kindred.
- Synapse — last. Requires real usage data from all of the above.
What this document supersedes
docs/resource_commons_prds.md— retained as historical sketch. Its content is now reorganized under Kindred (#2), Equip (#3), WikiForge (#4).docs/coordination_governance_prds.md— retained as historical sketch. Its content is now reorganized under CommonGround (absorbed FlowState + Co-Op OS governance), Kindred (absorbed Co-Op OS treasury + reputation), Synapse (#5).
Both files are kept in-place so the /docs/<slug> routes continue to work, but this document is the operative frame going forward.
What this document does NOT change
docs/commonground-prd.mdremains the authoritative PRD for CommonGround. It is unchanged by this consolidation.docs/manifesto.md, the constitutional documents, and all other architectural docs are unaffected.