The Ontology is the shared language of the container. When we all speak the same language — with the same definitions — we build faster, and ambiguity stops masquerading as depth.
Every term below is mechanical: it refers to something logged, counted, or verifiable on the Hub — not a feeling, an aspiration, or a marketing word.
Language Friction
Words like "trust," "committed," and "aligned" have mechanical definitions here. Using them loosely creates friction — precision resolves it.
Core Definitions
| Term | Old-World sense | Hub definition (mechanical) |
|---|---|---|
| Trust | A feeling of confidence in someone. | A calculable ledger score: (Honored ÷ Issued) × 100 over a rolling 90-day window, range 0–100. Honored = fulfilled before the hard deadline. Breached = past deadline without fulfillment. |
| Coherence | Vague harmony or alignment. | The measurable state of a node whose commitments, feedback, and outputs are aligned with the Ontology — quantified per-node, not felt. |
| Agency | Free will or autonomy. | A verifiable state-change. A node has Agency only when its logged commitments produce observable, verifiable outputs. |
| Contribution | Helping out; being useful. | A recorded, weightable act — Deep feedback, an honored commitment, or a published module — that feeds the node’s Contribution Score. |
| Witness | A bystander or observer. | A registered node that logs observations of extraction and deposits evidence — an active role, not a passive one. |
| Deposit | Money placed in a bank. | A verifiable alignment action recorded to the ledger that raises coherence — not a financial transaction. |
| Extraction | Taking something. | A measurable pattern where a party takes value without equivalent exchange, scored on the Extraction Index. |
| Rest | Laziness or idleness. | A deliberate, logged non-action that preserves coherence — the substrate of sustainable output, not its absence. |
| Module | A feature or add-on. | A discrete Hub tool with a feedback score. With ≥ 5 ratings averaging < 2.5, it triggers The Cliff. |
| The Cliff | Failure or collapse. | A 72-hour kill-or-fix circuit breaker triggered when a module’s feedback average drops below 2.5. Mechanical, not editorial. |
The Trust Score formula
Trust Score = ( Honored ÷ Issued ) × 100 · rolling 90-day · [0, 100]
A node below 40 loses access to active collaboration, grants, and governance. Trust is not a feeling — it is a number the ledger computes.
How the Ontology is used
- The Trust Ledger computes Trust and Contribution Scores from these definitions.
- The Coherence Widget flags content that uses Old-World senses instead of the mechanical ones.
- The Module Feedback System defines Module and The Cliff operationally — the 72-hour circuit breaker fires on numbers, not opinions.
- Repeatedly flagged terms from widget scans enter the Ontology review queue — the dictionary is self-correcting.