◇ Values Commons

One values file works in every app here.

Could local AI strengthen community without increasing surveillance?

understand + make · 3h alone, 90m together · 6 stations · 3 sources, every one dated

Beginner friendly. No programming required.

kosplora-route/0.1 · by Bentley, with Claude, 2026-08-18 · drafted with Claude (Anthropic), directed and edited by Bentley

What would change this routeA deployed community system whose own users cannot say what it collects would restructure stations 4 and 5: the design station treats that as the failure to avoid, and a live counterexample would become the study object instead.

The whole route, before you start

  1. 1 · ORIENT · 40mRead two pieces that assume different answers about where software and its data should live.
  2. 2 · PLACE · 30mName one real coordination problem in a space you already move through.
  3. 3 · PERSON · 45mSpeak with two people who hold different relationships to the problem.
  4. 4 · COUNTERPOINT · 20mState the strongest case that the thing you are sketching would centralize influence or expose people, using the source below rather than your own devil's advocate.
  5. 5 · MAKE · 60mDesign one tiny service that works without accounts, tracking, or autonomous messaging.
  6. 6 · REFLECT · 25mAsk one person to read the design and mark where the explanation fails.
Your conditions. Stated, never inferred; they stay in this browser and expire with the route.

Station 1 · orient · 40m

Read two pieces that assume different answers about where software and its data should live.

Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud · Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg, and Mark McGranaghan, Ink and Switch · 2019

Privacy by Design: the seven foundational principles · Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario · 2011

Station 2 · place · 30m

Name one real coordination problem in a space you already move through: a library, a co-op, a block, a recurring gathering. Write down who it costs and what they do instead.

Alternative: If going out is not available today, use a space you know well from memory and say so in your notes.

Station 3 · person · 45m

Speak with two people who hold different relationships to the problem: one who would use the thing you are imagining, and one who would carry its risks. Ask each what they would refuse.

Station 4 · counterpoint · 20m

State the strongest case that the thing you are sketching would centralize influence or expose people, using the source below rather than your own devil's advocate.

Decentralization: an incomplete ambition, Journal of Cultural Economy · Nathan Schneider · 2019

Station 5 · make · 60m

Design one tiny service that works without accounts, tracking, or autonomous messaging. Two pages at most.

Station 6 · reflect · 25m

Ask one person to read the design and mark where the explanation fails. Record what changed in your own view and what stays open.

What you leave with

A two-page design: the need, the smallest useful function, what it knows, what it refuses to know, who is responsible for what, how it fails, and how a person leaves it.

Ways out, all of them fine