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The Work Party

The Work Party serves as a ledger, accountability system and commitment form for people and organizations to accomplish stated tasks. The site architecture follows the Values Commons and Futurism Institute.Bentley Moon

What did your group actually agree?

Write each agreement down with a name and a date on it, and keep the disagreement in. You leave with a file your group keeps. No account, and nothing is sent anywhere.

Write your record See where the file goes

The sky over your part of the world right now, drawn in your browser from the date and time.

Settled 2026-06-14

Do we buy a second ladder, or agree on how to share the one we have?

Present: Ama, Joss, Rin, Teodor, Wen

Agreed

  1. Share the one ladder. No second purchase this year.everyone · no dateDone when: The question is not reopened before the year is out.
  2. A sign-out sheet lives on the shed door.Rin · by 2026-06-21Done when: Sheet is on the door and has at least one entry.
  3. Replace the frayed strap before anyone else uses it.Joss · by 2026-06-18Done when: New strap fitted, old one binned.

Still open

  • Whether a second ladder becomes necessary if two more households join.
  • Teodor disagrees with the whole approach and wants this revisited in six months.

What the summary says instead: “Some concerns were noted.”

Five people, one afternoon, one ladder. The last line keeps Teodor’s disagreement, and in six months it is the line that tells the group whether to reopen the question.Smoothed over, the same afternoon keeps its topic and loses who holds each of the three agreements, two dates, three tests of done, and the two things left open, one of them Teodor’s disagreement.

Write yours

Nothing here leaves your browser. There is no account, no server, and no address in this page’s code to send anything to. You get a file; what happens to it after that is yours.

1 The question, and who was there

Separated by commas. First names are enough, and safer.

Whoever runs a meeting can shape what it decides, so the record names them and what they wanted before it started. Both are optional.

2 What was agreed

One line per agreement. An agreement with nobody’s name on it is a wish, so the page keeps a column for it whether or not you fill it in.

Optional. A review of 91 studies of shared resources found that the ones that last tend to be checked by their own members, or by someone who answers to them (Cox, Arnold and Villamayor Tomás, 2010).

3 What stayed open

The field most worth filling in. A record with nothing open is usually a record of a conversation nobody was allowed to have.

Optional. If anyone wrote a position at the hearth, load the files here and what would have changed their mind is added above, with the file it came from named beside it. Load one earlier record instead and it opens for revision. Files are read in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Why this makes a file

The old kind of work party was neighbours arriving with tools to raise one barn in a day. Nobody took minutes, because the agreement was obvious and you could see when it was done. This page is for the agreements that hold a group together when the work is not a barn.

It makes a file because leaving has to be free. If members cannot leave with the record, the group can hold them to an agreement they no longer accept. A file each member keeps already gives them export, deletion and ownership, which a hosted tool can only promise.

It is the same shape this ecosystem already runs on, pointed at a second noun. A values file says what matters to one person. An agreements file says what a group committed to. Both are plain, both can be read aloud in a room, and both can be argued with by anyone holding a copy, which is the only kind of accountability that does not depend on the tool staying up.

  1. 1A position comes in A file written at the hearth, loaded in step 3. What would change its writer’s mind becomes a line left open, with the file named beside it.
  2. 2The group writes it down Each agreement carries a name, a date and a test of done when you give it one. The disagreement stays in, and the record can say its holder has read how it is worded.
  3. 3Everyone leaves with it Plain text anyone can read aloud, with the same record written again underneath as data for any tool that wants it.
  4. 4It comes back to be revised Load the file here next time. The new one says which record it revises, which agreements were added or dropped, and how many things are still open.

The format other pages read

Three other pages in this family read these records: the fault lines layer revises from them, the steward guidelines publish their lineage through them, and the register links them from adoptions. So the schema is stable and versioned, and record identifiers are permanent: a guideline can say which record decided it and the reference survives schema evolution.

work-party-record/1.0 · 2026-08-26

  • universal standing noted: who was in the circle is in the record
  • published reasons: the why ships with the what
  • revisability: records supersede, never overwrite
  • preserved dissent: disagreement is a field, never a footnote

2026-08-26: First stable version. Identifiers take the form wpr-NNNN and are permanent.

wpr-0001 · work-party-record/1.02026-08-26

Which duties make up the first steward guideline set, at which gate?

The circle
The maker, deciding on the record. No outside circle has met on this yet, and the record says so instead of implying one.
Decision
Six duties at the between-communities gate, each cited or openly argued, published as guidelines 0.1 with this record as lineage.
Reasons
  • The between-communities gate is the one with field evidence behind it: the map of 58 places at the time (57 since one ended) and its finding that the moment of maximum exposure is transit.
  • Six lines all of which can be defended beat ten of which two are padding.
  • Numbers were kept out of the duties: a day-count would need a basis, and there was none.
Dissent
None recorded. The circle was too small for honest dissent, which is a limit of this record, not a virtue.

Where the group files go

Four tools in this family work on files that a group passes round. Today they connect in two pairs, and the two pairs do not read each other yet. In every one, a single person collects the files in their own browser; nothing is uploaded.

Arguing a question

  1. The Socratic HearthEach person writes a position they could be talked out of.
  2. position file open-values-position
  3. The Work Party (this site)One person records what the group agreed; what would have changed each mind goes in what stayed open.
  4. agreement file, loaded back into the Work Party to revise it open-values-agreement

Ranking options by what a group values

  1. Your values fileEach person says how much each value matters to them, in Conscious Consuming or on its own page.
  2. values files open-values-passport
  3. Group valuesOne person adds up everyone’s values files and sees where the group agrees and where it splits.
  4. group file open-values-collective
  5. Shared planTurns the group file and a facts file into a plan with a reason on every line.

Not built The Work Party does not read the group file, and the shared plan does not read the agreement. A group that uses both pairs carries what one says into the other by hand.

Where this stands

The record, its reader, and revision history work today. A Hearth position file can enter this form; an earlier agreement can return, be revised, and leave with a computed account of what changed.

What does not exist yet is a recorded use by a real group holding several versions over time. The technical seam is built and tested; the social claim remains unearned. Two related surfaces already ship elsewhere: one finds where a group agrees and where it splits, the other turns that into a plan with a reason on every line.

Find where a group splitsTurn it into a plan