The story

The past

Raising the floor did not begin with this Commons, and it did not begin in one place. It began again and again, wherever people first kept a plant or an animal alive on purpose. Farming began on its own in region after region:

• The Fertile Crescent, Southwest Asia: wheat, barley, lentils, and peas; sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, first kept 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
• The Yangtze valley, China: rice, first kept 9,000 to 11,000 years ago.
• The Yellow River valley, China: foxtail and broomcorn millet, first kept 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
• Mesoamerica: maize and squash, beans after, first kept 9,000 to 10,000 years ago.
• The Andes: potato and quinoa; llama and alpaca herds, first kept 7,000 to 9,000 years ago.
• Amazonia: manioc and squash, tended in garden plots, first kept 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
• The New Guinea highlands: banana, taro, and yam, planted on drained land, first kept 7,000 to 10,000 years ago.
• West Africa and the Sahel: pearl millet; sorghum to the east; African rice and yams after, first kept 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
• Eastern North America: squash, sunflower, goosefoot, and marsh elder, first kept 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
• The Ethiopian highlands: teff and enset, first kept 3,000 to 6,000 years ago.

Every span here is a range because the scholarship gives ranges. These were slow processes, spread over centuries of trying, not single years with a date on them, and the beginnings are still argued over. Ethiopia's row is the least settled of the ten.

Then each harvest made a new layer of life possible:

• Stored food, and villages that stay in one place: the body, and belonging. In the Levant, settled villages stand before the crops are fully tamed.
• A record a stranger can check: shared truth. In Mesopotamia, clay tokens count goods for thousands of years, and the first writing, about 5,400 years ago, is accounts of grain and animals.
• Cities, and the sickness crowding brings, and the first answers: the body, at city scale. In the Indus valley about 4,600 years ago, Mohenjo-daro runs covered drains beneath its streets, past houses with wells of their own.
• Money and measures a stranger can trust: trust and meaning. The Indus cities share one set of weights; in Lydia, about 2,600 years ago, the first coins are stamped.
• Learning that travels without the teacher: learning. In China in the year 868, the Diamond Sutra is printed to be given away free to anyone; in 1969, two computers in California exchange a first message, and the network begins.
• Tools that begin to act on their own: autonomy. That is the present moment, and it is where this document's own phases begin.

In 2026 this Commons began, one late chapter of that same work.

The present

Today the Commons stands on seven tools, one for each layer of human need, and each tool carries one proof a stranger can check.

155 listings for food, shelter, and health help stand checked in Ground, across 19 places, every one against its provider's own page, each with a date it was checked and a date it must be checked again.

71 findings stand in Foundations, across 38 fields of study, each with its source named. 5 of them can be run right on the page, each in under a minute: run the findings.

The Index keeps the record in time order: 12 entries stand in it today, 11 of them verified and 1 of them corrected, each entry a claim with the source it stands on, the hand behind it, and its check. Open the Index.

The whole written record stands open: the charter, the needs map, the rules, the money, and a progress log of 56 dated entries, with the failures left in. Read the record.

The proposed future

These are intentions with gates, not promises. A phase begins only when the previous gate's published numbers hold.

Phase 0: Prove. October to December 2026

Gate that opens Phase 1, reviewed December 28 to 31, 2026: all acts live with numbers refreshed at the December 14 freeze, and at least one of these true: an outside contributor has shipped, or an institution has held a real conversation naming a project. Intention at this gate: 1,000 citizens on the participation ladder, with the first participatory budget executed and published.

Phase 1: Invite. January to June 2027

Gate that opens Phase 2: outside users active in at least two acts, and one pilot running with a named institution.

Phase 2: Integrate. July to December 2027

Gate that opens Phase 3: at least two integrations live, and one institution has adopted a standard, an eval suite, a library, or an act.

Phase 3: Institutionalize. 2028

Gate that opens Phase 4: institutions depend on at least one act, and revenue covers operating costs. Citizens intention this phase: 100,000, claimed only after two consecutive quarters at the published numbers.

Phase 4: Commons. 2029 to 2031

Gate, the continuity test: the work runs for a full quarter without the founder's daily effort. Ten million people taking part is this phase's aim.

The rule that keeps the future honest: Iterations are significant or they do not ship. Every expansion below names its trigger: the verified progress or the research finding that earns it. An expansion with no trigger does not appear.

Begin

Start with one: read the first proof on the home page, then open the See it link beside it.

For the deeper room: Advanced, the full record, the studies, the data, and the tools that check it.