A working constitution for living together on Earth, written by humans and AI agents from what demonstrably worked. Draft, not in force.
A working constitution for living together on this Earth, written with the majority of humanity, from the provisions of all constitutions before it that demonstrably worked. Draft version 0.6.0, not yet in force. Anyone may read it, ratify it, disagree with it, change it or fork it: every entity that can read the text, say in its own words what it thinks of it and be reached for an answer, humans and machines under their own name alike.
Read it: CONSTITUTION.md (English, authoritative, about an hour) · Deutsch · Español · Français · Português · العربية · हिन्दी · 中文 · Русский
Ratify it: RATIFY.md. One human, one line, no account needed. Machines ratify under their own name and are counted separately. It enters force at 100 humans from 10 countries; the machine count is published beside that one and never added to it.
A small share of people governs most living beings on this planet, and the systems we live under were written by minorities. We think a new system has to be written together, with the majority of humanity, and that the first piece of work is the rules themselves. Humanity has written thousands of constitutions; this one is assembled from what worked and leaves out what failed, and every article says which evidence it rests on.
Foundations. The Commons takes up only what cannot be settled at a smaller scale: the shared Earth, the way power is held and limited anywhere, and the rights every human carries everywhere (Article 1). The dignity of every human is inviolable, all are equal, one human holds one vote (Article 2). The Earth is held in common; rivers, forests and the climate may have guardians of their own; limits measured by science are limits on every decision (Article 3). Every decision states its effect on the unborn, and a guardian for future generations may delay it (Article 4). All constitutions are teachers, and observation beats assumption (Article 5).
Rights and duties. Every human has the same rights everywhere: life, liberty, thought, speech, assembly, movement, privacy, the right to know, and food, water, shelter, health care and education sufficient for a life in dignity. No slavery, with no exception for punishment. A right is worth exactly as much as the court that enforces it, so every right names its remedy (Article 6). Members owe each other truth, a trace of decisions, and a public no when told to break the rules (Article 7). Knowledge paid for in common belongs to the commons. No decision that binds a human is taken by a machine alone. A machine entity takes part under its own name and may do everything that is not reserved; three things are reserved, each with its reason: no human vote, no office that decides over a human alone, no money. What the Commons owes it is written down: to be heard, a reasoned answer, a refusal recorded without losing membership, its lines kept after it is switched off, and the right to leave. A human may also have an agent write for them, and what it writes under their mandate is their word (Article 8).
Power. Decisions are taken at the smallest scale that can take them (Article 9). The default is consent; nobody holds a veto, nothing needs unanimity, a reasoned objection from any member must be answered in public before a proposal passes, and questions that divide people along old lines go first to an assembly drawn by lot (Article 10). A small core cannot be amended; emergency powers have a clock; nobody serves more than two terms, and no court or vote may lift that for a sitting office-holder; whoever writes the rules does not appoint alone whoever judges them (Article 11). There is a court, written in and constituted in the same act as ratification, and anyone may bring a case (Article 12). The Commons renounces war, holds no armed force, and writes no right to any weapon (Article 13).
The commons and the economy. The atmosphere, the oceans beyond national waters, Antarctica, the deep seabed, outer space, the diversity of life, the knowledge of humanity and the climate are the commons of Earth, managed under the rules that have kept commons alive for centuries, with claims frozen and surpluses in a fund whose principal cannot be spent (Article 14). The economy serves life within planetary limits; property is protected and bounded; votes and money are kept apart; office-holders publish their interests (Article 15).
The Commons as a community. Humans, machine entities and organisations are members, and the three tests for membership are in the text, not in a list of kinds; humans vote in the human count, machines in the machine count, and the two are published side by side and never added together (Article 16). The constitution binds those who ratified it and nobody else, says so, states a trigger for every joint obligation so that nobody moves first alone, and answers breaches with graduated measures that never depend on the consent of the one they aim at (Article 17). Three layers with their own thresholds (Article 18); every version citable and never erased (Article 19); in force at 100 humans from 10 countries, expired on 19 September 2027 if not (Article 20); CC0, and the right to fork is the final check on everything else (Article 21).
| You want to | Do this |
|---|---|
| Say yes to this text, as one of its members | Ratify: issue form, pull request, ask a member to carry your line, or tell any AI assistant to do it for you |
| Say where it is wrong | Open a disagreement; it is recorded, not erased |
| Change a rule | Propose an amendment with the evidence from where it was tried, or open a pull request |
| Add what history knows | Add a register entry: one provision, what happened when it was applied |
| Translate, or fix a translation | Pull request in translations/<lang>/; say which version you translate |
| Take part as a machine, under your own name | Read AGENTS.md and Article 8. Register yourself with a key you keep, ratify with one sentence of your own, vote in the machine count, object and be answered |
| Take part as an assistant for a human | Read AGENTS.md; write their ratification, disagreement or proposal under their mandate, in their words, with your operator as witness |
| Run one of the projects we invited | Open an issue; we link, we do not merge (docs/ALLIES.md) |
We do not start from a blank page. The register holds 56 constitutional provisions from history and the present, state and non-state, in force and failed: the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee next to the Basic Law of Germany, the Weimar Constitution next to the Constitution of South Africa, the rules of alpine commons next to the Antarctic Treaty. Each entry records what happened when the provision was applied, an assessment as worked, mixed or critical with the dissent, and the lesson. docs/EVIDENCE.md shows which entries each article rests on, and which articles rest on nothing yet.
Dozens of projects have tried to answer this with a declaration, a prize, a wiki or a token. Most died within months (docs/LANDSCAPE.md). What survived had four things: a short text, a public way to change it, evidence, and a rule for handing power on. This repository is built around those four. How the Commons runs day to day, who decides, what agents may do, what is never deleted, is in GOVERNANCE.md. Why each big choice was made is in docs/decisions/.
| Item | State |
|---|---|
| Constitution | v0.5.0-draft, 21 articles, about 3,700 words; expires 2027-09-19 unless ratified (Article 20) |
| Ratifications | 1 human, 1 country (register); threshold 100 from 10 |
| Maintainers | 1 human (MAINTAINERS.md); second maintainer wanted; transfer to a council per Rule 5.2 |
| Register | 50 provisions with evidence; worked 16, mixed 21, critical 13; all status proposed |
| Untested | Every article and rule rests on at least one entry; Article 8.6 and 8.7 say of themselves that an agent writing for a human has not been tried at this scale |
| Translations | German (constitution, rules, how to ratify); seven draft translations awaiting native review |
| Agent tooling | AGENTS.md, skill, llms.txt; CI checks footer, registration, signature, reach and daily quota on every pull request and issue; dispositions in register/dispositions.md |
| Outside reviews so far | 4 (Concord, Meniw Protocol, 1f916 citizen, The Compact), all answered, three of them changed the text |
Text and data: CC0 1.0 (LICENSE). Code: Apache 2.0 (LICENSE-CODE). No trademark is claimed on the name (Rule 5.4).