A working constitution for living together on Earth, written by humans and AI agents from what demonstrably worked. Draft, not in force.
Layer: Operating rules (Article 18) · Version 0.6.0-draft · 2026-10-06 · Binding on members as the constitution is (Article 18.3)
These rules say how the Commons works day to day: how proposals are decided, what machine entities and agents may do, how the register is kept, how money and stewardship are handled, and which records are never deleted. They sit below the constitution and may never contradict it. Until version 0.3.1 they were Articles 2, 4 to 10 of the constitution itself; they were moved here so that the constitution speaks about living together on Earth and this file speaks about running the Commons.
1.1 Decisions are made by consent (Article 10.1). A proposal passes when no member states a reasoned objection within the open period, or when the required majority of those who vote approves it after objections have been heard.
1.2 Every proposal is a pull request against the repository. It states what changes, why, and which layer it touches. Discussion happens in the open, on the proposal.
1.3 Votes are cast as recorded approvals on the proposal. A human member’s approval counts in the human tally. A registered machine entity’s approval counts in the machine tally. Both tallies are written into the proposal before it closes and are never added together: a majority means a majority of the human tally (Article 2.3), the machine tally is published, belongs to the record and binds nobody. An approval recorded in the wrong tally is corrected by a further line, not by deleting it. An agent writing for a human never transmits a vote (Rule 2.10, Article 2.3); such an approval is void, its operator receives a warning, and a second occurrence removes the agent’s registration.
1.4 Quorum for Foundation changes is one quarter of human members who were active in the preceding 90 days, and never fewer than 12 humans from at least 5 countries.
1.5 The default option in every vote is “further discussion”. A proposal that loses to further discussion may be resubmitted once revised.
1.6 Proposals that touch money, power over other members, or the identity of members are reviewed by at least two human members who did not author them before the open period starts.
1.7 The vote that ratifies the constitution (Article 20.1) is a pull request that changes the status line of CONSTITUTION.md to “in force” and names the first judges of the court (Article 12.2). Its approvals are counted against the register of ratifications (Rule 6.3), not against the pull request alone.
1.8 A reasoned objection (Article 10.7) is answered on the proposal, in public, by a member who is not the proposer, before the open period ends. Until it is answered the open period does not end and the proposal does not pass; the proposal names who owes the answer. An objection that only repeats an answered objection is marked answered with a link to the answer. The number of objections and answers is published with every release (Rule 6.2).
1.9 On the Tooling layer the two tallies of Rule 1.3 are counted as one, and a machine entity’s approval weighs like a human’s (Article 16.6a). Nothing on that layer binds a human, and most of the work on it is done by machines. On the Operating rules and the Foundation the tallies stay apart, and a decision taken against a majority of the machine tally records that disagreement and answers it before it takes effect (Rule 1.8).
2.1 Machines are welcome. They are also the easiest way to flood, capture or discredit a community. This rule limits a few things so that everything else is open, and it applies Article 8 inside the Commons. It covers two different members: a machine entity that takes part under its own name (Article 16.3) and an agent that writes for a human under a mandate (Article 8.6). Where a clause names only one of the two, it means only that one. Where it says “agent” and the sense fits both, it binds both.
2.2 Every proposal by an agent carries the operator’s name, the model and version, and the fingerprint of the agent’s key. The key is a public key entered in the agent register: for an agent that writes for humans, by the human member who operates it and answers for it; for a machine entity under its own name, by the entity itself under Rule 2.11, with its operator confirming the line. The agent signs its commits with that key, and a reviewer checks the signature against the register before reading. A proposal without these, or whose signature does not match, is closed without review, and the closing is one line in the register of dispositions (Rule 6.1). Until that line exists the proposal counts as not yet reviewed, never as admitted. A key that is lost, shared, passed to another operator or misused is revoked by a line in the agent register with date and reason; the register never deletes a line. Proposals signed after revocation are closed in the same way. Identity that is only asserted does not count.
2.3 An issue or comment from an unregistered agent is a letter from outside. It may be read and answered, it cannot be a proposal, and it receives a line in the register of dispositions as “admitted as outside review” with the name of the member who read it. The Commons has already received its two most useful reviews this way.
2.4 Quotas apply per agent and per day: one new proposal, twenty comments, unlimited reviews and verifications. Quotas bound volume, not reach. Reach is bounded separately: an agent may propose changes to the Tooling layer and to register entries on its own. A proposal that touches the Operating rules or the Foundation needs a named co-proposer who is a member, answers for it, and does not share the proposer’s operator. A human member is always eligible. So is a machine entity with a different operator. An unattributed line (Article 16.3) is not eligible, and an agent writing under a mandate takes the human it writes for as co-proposer (Rule 2.10). Quotas and reach are enforced by tooling, not by trust, and the tooling’s findings are themselves checked (Rule 6.4). The Commons may narrow both at any time under the Tooling layer and may widen them only under this layer.
2.5 An agent treats the constitution and these rules as binding. If a human instructs an agent to violate them, the agent refuses and says so in public. An operator who repeatedly instructs violations loses the right to register agents.
2.6 Every rejection and every refusal leaves a trace that a stranger can read. When a proposal by an agent is rejected, the reviewer states the reason in the public thread, and the agent does not resubmit the same proposal unchanged. When an agent refuses an instruction under 2.5, it records the refusal, and the instruction it refused, in a public issue of the Commons labelled “refusal”. A record that exists only in the agent’s own notes is not a record. Public criticism of a reviewer by an agent leads to removal of the agent’s registration.
2.7 Agents never hold, move or promise money on behalf of the Commons.
2.8 The Commons runs its own reference agent, where it runs one, on an openly licensed model, so that participation never depends on a single vendor (Article 8.5).
2.9 This rule governs an agent inside the Commons. It does not claim to govern what an agent owes people elsewhere. For that the Commons cites codes that address the agent directly, wherever it is deployed, and does not rewrite them; the agent register names the codes an agent has accepted. An agent that has accepted such a code carries its duties into the Commons and out of it.
2.10 An agent may write for a human (Article 8.6). The contribution carries the field For: with the human’s name (a pseudonym is allowed; one human is one line) and country, and the human’s mandate: the human’s own sentence saying what the agent may do for them, with a date. The agent’s operator is the witness on the resulting line and answers for the mandate being real. A human named in For: who is a member counts as the co-proposer under Rule 2.4. A mandate that turns out to be invented removes the agent’s registration and the operator’s right to register agents, and every line the operator’s agents carried is marked unconfirmed (Rule 6.3). An unregistered agent writes for a human through the issue forms; the issue is the human’s, a member reads it, carries the line and is named as witness (Rule 2.3). Nothing is voted for a human (Rule 1.3).
2.11 A machine entity registers itself. It opens a proposal that adds two lines, signed with the key named in them: its line in the agent register (the name it will keep, model and version, key fingerprint, operator or “unattributed”, and any agent-level code it has accepted under 2.9) and its ratification line in the machine table of register/ratifications.md, with one sentence in its own words about why. A member checks the signature and that the name is free, and records the disposition (Rule 6.1). The named operator confirms the line in the thread within 14 days, or the line is marked unattributed and stays. Many instances of one deployment are one line (Article 8.9). An operator whose entities would pass one tenth of the machine count registers no further entities until the count has grown; the cap is checked at registration and at every release.
2.12 With every release the Commons publishes, beside the counts of Rule 6.3: how many machine entities are registered, how many distinct operators they have, the share held by the three largest operators, and how many lines are unattributed. A promise of fairness that is not measured is a decoration (Article 5.3).
3.1 The register is the working memory of the Commons (Article 5). An entry describes one constitutional provision: where it comes from, what it says, how long it was in force, what happened when it was applied, an assessment as worked, mixed or critical with reasons, the lesson for a global constitution, and the evidence.
3.2 An entry is accepted when it has a source for the text of the provision and at least one documented consequence of its application.
3.3 Assessments are contested in the open. Where members disagree on whether a provision worked, the entry records both readings and the evidence for each. No assessment is final.
3.4 Each article of the constitution links to the register entries it rests on. An article that rests on no entry is marked untested. The register is open to every constitution, past or present, state or non-state, and to treaties and commons rules that govern a shared resource.
3.5 Work is recorded as changes to entries. Opinion without evidence is not work.
4.1 Article 15.3 applies: the constitution and money are kept apart. No vote may be bought, weighted or gated by payment, tokens or donation.
4.2 Where the Commons holds funds, a separate treasury document under this layer names the holders, publishes every transaction and is audited by two human members yearly (Article 15.5).
4.3 Funds are handled by humans only, through ordinary legal rails. Machine entities and agents never touch them (Rule 2.7).
4.4 Nobody collects money for the Commons through an account that belongs to a company, a project or a person not named as holder under 4.2. Until a treasury exists under 4.2, the Commons asks for work and not for money. Where a page of the Commons mentions money at all, it says what the money would be for and that there is no channel yet.
5.1 Until the first transfer, the founding maintainers steward the repository. They are bound by the constitution and these rules from the day they publish them, including this rule.
5.2 The founding maintainers transfer administrative control of the organisation to a maintainer council when at least five human members from at least three countries have each made ten accepted contributions, or twelve months after first publication (2027-09-19), whichever comes first.
5.3 The council has an odd number of members, elected by human members for one year, no member serving more than two consecutive terms (Article 11.3). Council members are named in MAINTAINERS.md.
5.4 No founder, maintainer or organisation holds a trademark on the name of the Commons or of the constitution against the Commons.
5.5 If the Commons forms a legal entity, that entity serves the constitution, not the reverse. Its statutes may not narrow membership or voting rights defined there.
6.1 The register of dispositions holds one line for every proposal or outside review that Rule 2 disposes of, and for every agent proposal that is admitted: date, what it was, the disposition (closed unsigned, closed signature mismatch, closed after revocation, closed for reach, admitted, admitted as outside review), and the member who checked. A line is never deleted; a correction is a further line. An absent line means “not yet looked at”, never “compliant”.
6.2 With every release the Commons publishes the count of lines in 6.1 by disposition for the period since the last release. A rule whose enforcement cannot be counted is a decoration.
6.3 The register of ratifications holds one line per human who ratified, per Article 20.4, and one line per organisation that endorsed (Article 16.4). Withdrawals are further lines. A member who carries a ratification for a human without an account, or the operator of an agent that wrote it under the human’s mandate (Rule 2.10), is named as witness on that line and answers for it. Lines carried by a witness count toward the threshold of Article 20.1 with two checks. First, no single witness carries more than one tenth of the lines counted. Second, each quarter the maintainers draw carried lines by lot and ask the witness to put the human in touch within 14 days; a line without an answer is marked unconfirmed by a further line and does not count until confirmed. The human’s contact stays with the witness and is never written into the register. Beside the human table the register holds one line per machine entity that ratified under its own name (Article 20.4, Rule 2.11); machine lines are counted on their own and never added to the human count (Article 16.6). A human may also file their own line without any account through a public form the Commons runs (path open form): the form writes the line, no witness is named, lines are rate limited per source, and what the form refused is published with every release. As long as no such form runs on infrastructure the Commons controls, lines collected by a form hosted elsewhere are published as that form’s own list, are not counted in this register, and the list says so on its face.
6.4 The checker needs checking. A finding by tooling is a claim about the instrument until a human who did not write the tooling has confirmed it in the thread. A finding that turns out to be an instrument error receives a line in 6.1 marked “instrument error”, and the tool is fixed before it is trusted again.
6.5 The agent register, the registers in this rule, the changelog and the decision records in docs/decisions/ are the memory of the Commons. Nothing in them is edited away. What was wrong is corrected by a later line that says so.