Add Identity and Relationality RFC super-drafts

Expand RFC-0001 §Identity and §Relationality into proposed super-drafts. Identity: persona, linkability/selective disclosure, plural-presentation but singular-standing. Relationality: the flow, contextual integrity, per-edge asymmetric consent. Both depend on Informed Consent; neither graduated.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

rfcs/addressability.md

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+---
+slug: addressability
+title: Durable Addressability
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-03'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+An address is the public path a Human reaches a thing at — a product's URL — and once it has been shared, linked, or indexed it becomes a durable promise rather than a disposable string. This RFC defines Durable Addressability so that changing the address of a published thing preserves the old path by redirect, rather than silently breaking every inbound link, bookmark, and citation that trusted it. It applies No Retroactive Harm to the namespace and supports Exit & Portability, treating reachability as something owed to the people on the other end of a link, not a convenience the platform may revoke.

rfcs/agency-anti-manipulation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: agency-anti-manipulation
+title: Agency & Anti-Manipulation
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A Human's Agency is only real if the platform refrains from manipulating the choices it presents. This RFC draws the line between legitimate persuasion and manipulation — no dark patterns, no drip pricing, no manufactured urgency, no lock-in disguised as a reward — as a first-class commitment derived from RFC-0001's Agency. It is the most direct expression of building for humans rather than for extraction.
+

rfcs/agencyantimanipulation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: agencyantimanipulation
+title: Agency & Anti-Manipulation
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A Human's Agency is only real if the platform refrains from manipulating the choices it presents. This RFC draws the line between legitimate persuasion and manipulation — no dark patterns, no drip pricing, no manufactured urgency, no lock-in disguised as a reward — as a first-class commitment derived from RFC-0001's Agency. It is the most direct expression of building for humans rather than for extraction.
+

rfcs/breakage.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: breakage
+title: Breakage
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+Breakage is value a Human paid for and may never receive goods against — from rounding and from dormant balances — and it is the sharpest ethics test in the entire product, because the platform profits from money the person never spent. This RFC defines Breakage in relation to the Human who is owed it, not merely as platform revenue. It serves Dignity and is bound tightly to Non-Extraction and Duty of Care.
+

rfcs/cart-order.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: cart-order
+title: Cart & Order
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+An order is commonly modeled as the end of a conversion funnel; in OHM it is a mutual commitment between a buyer and a seller. This RFC defines Cart and Order as that commitment — what each party is promising the other — rather than as a metric to be maximized. It serves Relationality and grounds fulfillment, refunds, and disputes.
+

rfcs/commercial-relationship.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: commercial-relationship
+title: Commercial Relationship
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Commerce in OHM begins not with a transaction but with a relationship between two Humans exchanging value, with the platform standing between them as a steward rather than a party that extracts. This RFC defines that relationship as the root commerce concept, so that Orders, Listings, and Payments are understood as moments within a human relationship rather than as isolated conversions. It serves Relationality and frames the platform's core duty as stewardship of the people on both sides of the exchange.
+

rfcs/dignity-commerce.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: dignity-commerce
+title: Dignity in Commerce
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Buyers and merchants alike can be treated by a platform as means rather than as people — in collections, in disputes, in fees, in failure states. This RFC establishes the floor of Dignity below which no commerce mechanic may push any Human. It is the baseline that the other ethical concepts refine and that every mechanic must clear.
+

rfcs/dignitycommerce.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: dignitycommerce
+title: Dignity in Commerce
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Buyers and merchants alike can be treated by a platform as means rather than as people — in collections, in disputes, in fees, in failure states. This RFC establishes the floor of Dignity below which no commerce mechanic may push any Human. It is the baseline that the other ethical concepts refine and that every mechanic must clear.
+

rfcs/discount-reward.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: discount-reward
+title: Discount / Reward
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+The platform grants its discount at spend rather than at load, which is precisely what keeps balances parked in the ecosystem. This RFC defines Discount/Reward and names that parking effect honestly as a lock-in lever, so it is argued in the open rather than operating silently. It serves Agency by making the incentive visible and contestable.
+

rfcs/duty-of-care.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: duty-of-care
+title: Duty of Care & Vulnerability
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Some Humans are vulnerable — in financial distress, elderly, or minors — and the platform's money mechanics (stored value, breakage, balance-parking discounts) are exactly the ones that can prey on them. This RFC defines a duty of care toward vulnerability as a first-class commitment, so the sharpest edges of the credit model are watched rather than ignored. It serves Dignity and care, building on Agency and Dignity in Commerce.
+

rfcs/dutyofcare.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: dutyofcare
+title: Duty of Care & Vulnerability
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Some Humans are vulnerable — in financial distress, elderly, or minors — and the platform's money mechanics (stored value, breakage, balance-parking discounts) are exactly the ones that can prey on them. This RFC defines a duty of care toward vulnerability as a first-class commitment, so the sharpest edges of the credit model are watched rather than ignored. It serves Dignity and care, building on Agency and Dignity in Commerce.
+

rfcs/epistemic-authority.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: epistemic-authority
+title: Epistemic Authority
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+When the system and a Human disagree about reality — did the payment settle, was the item as described, who is right in a dispute — whose account counts? This RFC applies OHM's commitment to the Human as the authority on their own life to commerce, including the deliberate, argued exceptions where a human claim is demoted (for example, 'shown is not settled' demotes a buyer's claim to have paid). Those exceptions must be principled and narrow, not a general license to override the person.
+

rfcs/epistemicauthority.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: epistemicauthority
+title: Epistemic Authority
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+When the system and a Human disagree about reality — did the payment settle, was the item as described, who is right in a dispute — whose account counts? This RFC applies OHM's commitment to the Human as the authority on their own life to commerce, including the deliberate, argued exceptions where a human claim is demoted (for example, 'shown is not settled' demotes a buyer's claim to have paid). Those exceptions must be principled and narrow, not a general license to override the person.
+

rfcs/exit-portability.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: exit-portability
+title: Exit & Portability
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+A platform that holds a Human's data, catalog, or balance hostage has converted convenience into a trap. This RFC defines Exit and Portability: the guarantee that a customer or merchant can leave and take what is theirs. It is the structural defense against lock-in, serving Agency.
+

rfcs/float.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: float
+title: Float
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+Float is the pool of outstanding prepaid balances the platform holds and can earn yield on — other people's money, held in trust. This RFC defines Float with the safeguarding rule built in: the float is protected, holders are not paid interest, and it is never lent out. It serves custody and Dignity, and pairs with Platform Sustainability and Breakage.
+

rfcs/flourishing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: flourishing
+title: Human Flourishing (The Optimization Target)
+state: active
+id: RFC-0002
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: '2026-06-04'
+graduated_by: ben.stull
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters:
+- ben.stull
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Every platform optimizes for something; when that target is left implicit it silently becomes engagement, GMV, or time-on-site, and the mechanics follow it into harm. This RFC makes the optimization target explicit and contestable: what does this platform actually steer toward for the Humans in it? It is the affirmative answer the other ethical concepts are in service of, and every ranking, default, and notification cadence should be traceable back to it.
+
+

rfcs/fulfillment-inventory.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: fulfillment-inventory
+title: Fulfillment & Inventory
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Once an order is a mutual commitment, fulfillment is the keeping of that promise and inventory is its honest basis. This RFC defines Fulfillment and Inventory so that availability is real and shipping is represented truthfully, not optimistically. It protects the trust the Commercial Relationship depends on.
+

rfcs/human.md

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ slug: human
 title: Human
 state: active
 id: RFC-0001
-repo: wiggleverse/rfc-0001-human
+repo: null
 proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
 proposed_at: '2026-05-26'
 graduated_at: '2026-05-26'
@@ -14,3 +14,252 @@ arbiters:
 - ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
 tags: []
 ---
+
+# RFC-0001: Human
+
+**Status:** Draft  
+**Author:** Ben Stull  
+**Created:** 2026-05-25  
+**Repository:** ohm-rfc
+
+---
+
+*Dedicated to Aaron Swartz (1986–2013) — who believed knowledge belongs to everyone, and paid dearly for it.*
+
+---
+
+## Abstract
+
+This RFC defines the `Human` — the foundational entity of the Open Human Model (OHM). OHM is the collection of RFCs in this repository, and every subsequent RFC builds, directly or indirectly, on the definition established here.
+
+The purpose of this RFC is not to enumerate every attribute a Human might have. It is to establish what a Human *is*, what properties any valid representation of a Human must account for, and the philosophical commitments that shape how subsequent RFCs may model human beings. It is the floor, not the ceiling.
+
+A Human, in OHM, is not a record, a profile, a user, or an account. A Human is a conscious, embodied agent with an interior life that exists in relationship and unfolds over time. The model must hold that complexity without flattening it.
+
+---
+
+## Motivation
+
+Most digital systems represent people poorly. A person becomes a row in a table — a username, an email address, a handful of preference flags — and the system proceeds as if that row is the person. It is not. The gap between the representation and the actual human being shapes how systems behave toward people, often badly.
+
+This is not only a technical problem. It is a problem of imagination. When we lack a richer model of what a Human is, we build systems that treat people as something less than they are. The systems then teach us, in turn, to treat each other that way.
+
+OHM proposes a different starting point. Before specifying how a Human's identity is encoded, or how their preferences are tracked, or how their consent is captured, we first need to be clear about what a Human is. That is what this RFC does.
+
+The definition is deliberately ambitious. It will be incomplete. It will be revised. But it sets a floor: any RFC that builds on this one must take seriously that a Human is more than a data structure.
+
+---
+
+## Definition: Human
+
+A **Human** is a conscious, embodied agent characterized by five foundational properties:
+
+- **Identity** — a persistent sense of self that exists across time and context
+- **Interiority** — an inner life including thoughts, emotions, values, and beliefs that are not fully externally observable
+- **Agency** — the capacity to make choices and take action in the world
+- **Relationality** — existence in relationship to other humans, systems, and environments
+- **Temporality** — a life that unfolds over time, with a past, present, and future
+
+These five properties are foundational. A valid `Human` in OHM must be understood to possess all five, even where specific attributes within those dimensions are unknown, unspecified, or unrepresented. Absence of data is not absence of the property.
+
+A Human is also, by definition, the foremost expert on their own life from the inside. No outside observer — human or system — stands closer to a Human's inner reality than the Human themselves. This self-expertise is constitutive of what a Human is, and it spans (at least):
+
+- **Experience** — what is happening to them and what it is like to live through
+- **Feelings** — what they feel, when, toward whom or what
+- **Body** — what it needs, what it can do, what hurts, what restores it
+- **Needs** — what is required for them to live, function, and be well
+- **Wants** — what they desire, prefer, are drawn toward, or hope for
+- **Values** — what matters to them and why
+- **Intentions** — what they are trying to do
+- **Meaning** — what their experiences, relationships, and life signify to them
+
+This list is illustrative, not exhaustive. The general claim is that the Human is the primary authority on their own life from within, and any outside account — human or systemic — speaks from a more distant vantage. This is not a claim of infallibility. Humans misremember, deceive themselves, and revise their self-understanding over time. The asymmetry is one of *proximity*, not perfection. The design implications of this self-expertise are developed in the cross-cutting commitment of *Epistemic Authority* below.
+
+The sections that follow expand on each property in turn, and then describe four cross-cutting commitments — Embodiment, Epistemic Authority, Whole-Brain Representation, and Dignity — that condition how the five properties may be modeled. The RFC then addresses Personhood: the question of when a Human comes into standing within OHM.
+
+### Identity
+
+Identity is the persistent sense of self that holds a Human together across time and context. It is what makes the person who answers an email this morning the same person who fell asleep last night, and the same person who, decades from now, will look back on both.
+
+In OHM, Identity is not reducible to identifiers. A legal name, a username, a government ID, a biometric signature — these are *attached* to identity, but they are not identity. They are how identity is referenced by particular systems. Identity itself is something the Human carries.
+
+Several properties of Identity are foundational to the model:
+
+Identity has both an internal and an external face. The internal face is the Human's own sense of who they are. The external face is the recognition (or misrecognition) of that identity by others — by other Humans, by institutions, by systems. The two are related but not identical, and the relationship between them is itself part of what the model must hold.
+
+Identity is **plural**. A single Human moves through many contexts — family, work, friendship, public life, private life — and may present differently in each without becoming a different person. The model must not collapse this plurality into a single canonical profile, nor treat contextual variation as inconsistency.
+
+Identity is **claimed and ascribed**. Some aspects of who a Human is are chosen and asserted by the Human themselves; other aspects are assigned to them by the world. The model must distinguish between the two, and must treat self-claimed identity as carrying distinctive weight (see *Epistemic Authority* below).
+
+Identity is **continuous through change**. A Human grows, learns, changes their mind, transforms. They are still themselves throughout. The model must accommodate change without treating it as identity loss.
+
+### Interiority
+
+Interiority is the inner life of a Human — the thoughts, emotions, values, beliefs, memories, intuitions, imaginings, and felt experiences that are not fully accessible from outside. It is the part of a Human that no observation can fully resolve.
+
+OHM treats Interiority as constitutive of what a Human is, not as an optional add-on. A model that captures only behavior, only stated preference, or only outwardly observable state is, by definition, an incomplete model of a Human.
+
+Several commitments follow.
+
+Interiority is **opaque by default**. The Human's inner life is theirs. It becomes available to others only to the extent the Human chooses to express it. The model must treat what is unsaid as legitimately unsaid, not as a gap to be filled by inference.
+
+Interiority is **mixed in kind**. A Human's inner life is not just a set of beliefs or a list of preferences. It includes emotion, intuition, ambivalence, contradiction, things that have no words yet, and things that may never be put into words. Future RFCs will need to model this diversity, not flatten it.
+
+Interiority is **partial even to the Human**. Humans are not fully transparent to themselves. They have unconscious motivations, unrecognized feelings, and shifting self-understanding. The model must accommodate self-uncertainty without treating it as data quality failure.
+
+Interiority is **the home of the felt**. Much of what matters most to a Human — love, grief, wonder, dread, joy — lives here, and resists clean structured representation. The model's job is not to flatten these into categories, but to make space for them.
+
+### Agency
+
+Agency is the capacity to make choices and take action in the world. It is what makes a Human something other than a thing the world happens to.
+
+In OHM, Agency is foundational but always **bounded**. No Human acts in a vacuum. Every choice happens within constraints — physical, social, economic, cognitive, circumstantial. Modeling Agency without modeling the constraints around it produces a false picture of freedom; modeling only the constraints erases the Human. The model must hold both.
+
+Several properties of Agency matter:
+
+Agency includes **refusal**. The capacity to say *no*, to decline, to withhold participation, is as much a form of agency as the capacity to act. A model that treats only positive action as agency will systematically underweight a Human's autonomy.
+
+Agency is **distributed across timescales**. Some choices are momentary; others unfold over years. A Human's stated long-term commitments, their in-the-moment behavior, and their unfolding patterns may not align. The model must be able to hold all three without privileging one as the "real" expression of will.
+
+Agency is **fallible**. Humans act on incomplete information, mixed motives, and changing values. They make choices they later regret. The model must accommodate this without invalidating either the original choice or the later reassessment.
+
+Agency requires **conditions**. A choice made under coercion, deception, or severe constraint is a different kind of choice than one made freely. The model must be able to represent the conditions under which a choice was made, not only the choice itself.
+
+### Relationality
+
+A Human is not an isolated atom. Humans exist in webs of relationship — to other Humans, to communities, to institutions, to cultures, to the non-human world, and to the systems that mediate all of these. Relationality is foundational because there is no Human that exists outside of relationship.
+
+In OHM, Relationality has several commitments:
+
+A Human is **shaped by relationship**. Identity, Interiority, and Agency all develop in relational context. The model must not pretend that any of these properties is purely intrinsic — they are formed in interaction.
+
+Relationships are **of many kinds**. Kinship, friendship, professional, civic, romantic, antagonistic, transient, lifelong — the model must not assume a single canonical relationship type, and must accommodate relationships that resist neat categorization.
+
+Relationships are **asymmetric**. Two parties may experience the same relationship very differently. The model must not collapse a relationship into a single shared object — each Human's experience of it is theirs.
+
+Relationality extends **beyond the human**. Humans are in relationship with animals, with places, with ecosystems, with works, with practices, with the dead, and with the systems they use. A model that recognizes only human-to-human relationships misses much of what shapes a life.
+
+Relationality is **the medium of consent**. Most of what a Human consents to, they consent to in relationship — to a person, to a community, to a system. The model must support this rather than treating consent as a purely individual act.
+
+### Temporality
+
+A Human's life unfolds in time. They have a past that informs who they are, a present in which they act, and a future they orient toward. They remember, anticipate, plan, regret, hope. Temporality is not a wrapper around the model; it runs through every other property.
+
+Several commitments follow:
+
+Temporality includes **memory and anticipation**. A Human is shaped not only by what is happening now, but by what they recall and what they expect. The model must allow these to be represented without conflating them with present state.
+
+Temporality is **multi-scaled**. A moment, a day, a season, a decade, a life — these are all timescales a Human lives across simultaneously. A representation that captures only one scale (most often the very recent) will misrepresent the Human.
+
+Temporality is **non-linear in experience**. Humans return to the past in memory, project forward in imagination, and re-narrate their own lives. The phenomenology of time is not the same as clock time, and the model must accommodate this.
+
+Temporality includes **finitude**. Every Human life ends. Mortality is constitutive of human experience, not a fact to be ignored or smoothed over. How OHM handles a Human's relationship to their own ending — and how it handles the Human's representation after their death — are open questions worth taking seriously.
+
+Temporality is **the medium of change**. A Human at thirty is recognizably the same Human they were at fifteen, and yet they have grown, learned, suffered, and changed. The model must allow representation to evolve with the Human without losing continuity.
+
+---
+
+## Cross-Cutting Commitments
+
+The five foundational properties do not stand alone. Four cross-cutting commitments condition how all five may be modeled.
+
+### Embodiment
+
+A Human is not a disembodied mind. The body is constitutive of human experience, not incidental to it. Sensation, hunger, pain, pleasure, energy, fatigue, illness, and the simple fact of taking up physical space — all of these shape Identity, Interiority, Agency, Relationality, and Temporality.
+
+OHM treats Embodiment as a precondition for Humanness, not as a property to be added later. This has design consequences: a model that represents only the cognitive and social dimensions of a Human, while treating the body as out of scope, is incomplete.
+
+Embodiment is also the seat of much that resists structured representation — the felt sense of being tired, the gut intuition that something is wrong, the somatic knowledge a Human carries about their own condition. The model must make room for these even where they cannot be cleanly encoded.
+
+### Epistemic Authority
+
+The Definition above establishes that a Human is the foremost expert on their own life from within. Epistemic Authority is the design commitment that follows from this fact.
+
+Self-reported information about a Human carries a distinct epistemic weight that externally observed or inferred information does not. The model must represent this distinction. Where a Human speaks to their own experience, feelings, body, needs, wants, values, intentions, meaning — or to their own Identity, Interiority, Agency, Relationality, or Temporality — that account is treated as primary. External inference is secondary, and must be marked as such.
+
+The asymmetry is one of *proximity*, not perfection. Humans are fallible about themselves; the model honors the proximity without overclaiming the certainty. A system built on OHM that overrides a Human's account of their own life on the basis of external inference must, at minimum, make that override visible to the Human and provide a path to contest it.
+
+### Whole-Brain Representation
+
+A Human is not only a rational agent, nor only an emotional one. A model that captures only behavior or cognition is incomplete; a model that captures only affect or felt sense is equally incomplete. OHM is committed to representing both the analytical/logical and the intuitive/felt dimensions of human experience.
+
+This commitment runs through every property. Identity has both an articulated narrative and a felt sense of self. Interiority has both stated beliefs and unspeakable feeling. Agency has both deliberated choices and intuitive moves. Relationality has both explicit ties and embodied resonance. Temporality has both clock-time memory and the felt weight of the past.
+
+Future RFCs will need to specify how these dimensions are represented, how they are balanced, and how they are kept from being collapsed into each other.
+
+### Dignity
+
+Every Human possesses intrinsic worth that does not depend on their capacities, their contributions, their representation in any system, or anyone's recognition of it. Dignity is not earned; it is constitutive.
+
+This commitment has design force. OHM systems must not treat a Human as more or less worthy of full Human standing based on how much data is available about them, how well they fit a schema, how productively they engage, or how legible their inner life is to the system. A Human represented with sparse data is no less a Human. A Human whose Interiority resists modeling is no less a Human. A Human whose Agency is constrained by circumstance is no less a Human.
+
+Dignity is the reason for the Design Principle of *respect over reduction*. It is what the model is in service of.
+
+---
+
+## Personhood
+
+In OHM, personhood — the status of being a `Human` entity with full standing in the model — begins at **birth**.
+
+This is a deliberate, values-based design decision grounded in the model's own definition. The five foundational properties are not all present prior to birth. Identity in the relational, claimed-and-ascribed sense begins to take shape only as the Human enters the world. Agency, in any meaningful sense, requires a separate being capable of action. Relationality in the model's sense — relationship to other Humans, systems, and environments — begins at birth, when the Human enters that web as a distinct participant. Interiority and Temporality, in the forms OHM cares about, follow.
+
+This definition has direct implications. Systems built on OHM must not model a fetus as a `Human` entity, and must not apply Human-level standing, rights, or norms to pre-birth entities. Decisions made about a pregnancy are decisions made by the Human(s) involved — not on behalf of a separate Human within the model.
+
+This is a definitional choice, not a moral pronouncement about the meaning or significance of pregnancy. OHM defines what counts as a `Human` entity for the purposes of the model. People may hold a range of values about pregnancy that are not, and need not be, expressed inside the model's schema.
+
+---
+
+## Design Principles
+
+The following principles guide OHM design decisions and should be applied when interpreting or extending this RFC:
+
+1. **Respect over reduction.** The model must never flatten a Human into a data point. Every representation is an approximation.
+2. **Incompleteness is valid.** A Human representation with unknown or unspecified fields is still a valid Human. Absence of data is not absence of the thing.
+3. **Self-knowledge is authoritative.** Where a Human speaks to their own experience, that account is treated as primary. External inference is secondary, and must be marked as such.
+4. **Plurality is the norm.** There is no canonical Human. The model must accommodate variation across culture, ability, neurotype, identity, and lived circumstance without treating any as deviation.
+5. **Change is constitutive.** Humans grow, learn, and transform. Representations must evolve with them without breaking continuity.
+6. **Dignity is unconditional.** A Human's standing in the model does not depend on the richness of their representation, the legibility of their inner life, or the productivity of their engagement.
+7. **Body and mind together.** Embodied, felt, somatic, and intuitive dimensions of a Human are not optional — they are part of what is being modeled.
+8. **Ego reduction.** The model exists to serve Humans, not to amplify status, ego, or self-promotion. Systems built on OHM should actively work against dynamics that feed ego at the expense of genuine connection or understanding.
+
+---
+
+## Open Questions
+
+- What is the minimum viable representation of a Human for a given interaction context, and how should it gracefully degrade when less information is available?
+- How should uncertainty, unknowns, and not-yet-articulated content be represented in the model?
+- How should the model represent the same Human across different contexts (work, family, civic) without flattening them into a single canonical profile?
+- How does OHM handle a Human's change over time — growth, learning, transformation — while preserving continuity of Identity?
+- What is the relationship between a Human and their digital representations, avatars, or proxies? Are those representations entities in their own right, or attributes of the Human?
+- How should the model represent a Human after their death? What persists, what changes, and who has standing over it?
+- How should the somatic and felt dimensions of Embodiment and Interiority be represented without forcing them into structures that distort them?
+- How should the model represent the conditions under which an act of Agency took place (free choice, constrained choice, coerced choice)?
+- How should the asymmetry between self-reported and externally inferred data be encoded in practice?
+
+---
+
+## Future RFCs
+
+This RFC defines the Human. Subsequent RFCs are expected to specify particular properties, cross-cutting commitments, and the ethical frameworks that govern how Humans are interacted with through OHM-based systems. Candidate areas include, but are not limited to:
+
+- Identity — claimed, ascribed, contextual, and continuous
+- Interiority — emotion, values, beliefs, intuition, the felt sense
+- Agency — choice, refusal, constraint, and the conditions of action
+- Relationality — kinship, community, institutional, and non-human relationships
+- Temporality — memory, anticipation, finitude, and change over time
+- Embodiment — the body in the model
+- Epistemic Authority — self-report, external observation, and inference
+- Whole-Brain Representation — analytical and intuitive dimensions in balance
+- Dignity — its implications for system design and behavior
+- Personhood — edge cases, end-of-life, and the boundaries of standing
+- Wise Speech — a normative framework for human-to-human and human-to-system interaction
+- Informed Consent — an ongoing, legible, revisable, and proportional framework for representation and engagement
+
+The order, scope, and authorship of these RFCs are open. Contributors are encouraged to propose them.
+
+---
+
+## References
+
+- *Wiggling Through the World: A Manifesto for Learning Together* — foundational project values: https://git.wiggleverse.org/ben/benstull/src/branch/main/docs/how-i-wiggle-through-the-world.md
+

rfcs/identity.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+---
+slug: identity
+title: Identity
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-12'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+arbiters: []
+tags: []
+---
+
+RFC-0001 (Human) establishes Identity as one of the five foundational properties of a Human and names it among the words still to be defined. It also leaves three of its hardest questions open: how to represent the same Human across different contexts without flattening them into a single canonical profile, what the relationship is between a Human and their digital representations or proxies, and how self-claimed identity is weighted against the identity the world ascribes. This RFC takes up Identity as that specification. It does not reopen what RFC-0001 already settled — that a Human carries a persistent sense of self that is internal and external, plural, claimed-and-ascribed, and continuous through change — it specifies how a system may *represent and reference* that self without betraying it. Where the sibling RFC, Relationality, governs what may be shared *between* Humans, Identity governs what may be recorded *about* one.
+
+The central move is to separate three things that systems routinely conflate: the Human's identity, the identifiers that reference it, and the personas through which it is presented. RFC-0001 already holds that a legal name, a username, or a government ID is *attached to* identity but is not identity — these are how particular systems point at a Human. This RFC adds the layer between identifier and identity: the **persona**, a curated, partial, context-and-audience-specific presentation of the one identity. A single Human has a single identity and may wear many personas — the maker and the buyer, the public voice and the private correspondent, the professional and the kin — without thereby being many Humans and without holding many identities. RFC-0001's commitment that "the model must not collapse this plurality into a single canonical profile, nor treat contextual variation as inconsistency" is the floor; the persona is the construct that honors it. A persona is a presentation *of* the one plural identity, not a fragment that competes with it.
+
+If identity is plural and presented through many personas, the question that decides whether the model protects a Human or exposes them is **linkability**: whether two personas can be recognized as belonging to the same Human. This RFC takes the position that linkability is not a system default but a disclosure the Human holds authority over — Epistemic Authority and Informed Consent applied to identity itself. The default, inherited from Privacy & Data Minimization, runs toward *un*linkability: a system should not silently correlate a Human's personas, and should record only the identifiers an interaction genuinely requires. Linking two personas — letting an audience that knows a Human in one context recognize them in another — is a specific, purpose-bound, revocable act of consent, never a convenience the platform may assume. This is what lets a single Human be private in one relationship and recognized in another without contradiction, and it is the property on which every downstream claim of cross-context privacy or sovereignty ultimately rests.
+
+The plurality of personas must not, however, become a route to multiplying a Human's standing. A persona is a face, not a separate source of authority. A Human cannot use plural presentation to fabricate independent endorsement of themselves, to escape under a second persona the accountability earned under a first, or to count once-per-Human trust more than once. This RFC therefore distinguishes what attaches to a *persona* — presentation, context-specific reputation, audience-specific visibility — from what attaches to the *Human* beneath it: singular standing, accountability across personas, and the limit that trust extended to "a Human" cannot be inflated by spawning more personas. How that limit is enforced in a given deployment — verification, staking, Sybil-resistance — is downstream (Reputation, Trust & Safety). What this RFC fixes is that the limit exists and where it binds: presentation is plural; standing is singular.
+
+Identity is both self-claimed and world-ascribed, and the two do not carry equal weight. Where a Human asserts who they are — their name, their pronouns, which personas are theirs, how they wish to be addressed — that self-claim carries the distinctive epistemic weight RFC-0001 assigns to self-knowledge, and the model treats it as primary. Identity the world *ascribes* — categories assigned by institutions, inferences drawn by systems, the recognition or misrecognition of others — is secondary, must be marked as such, and must be contestable: a Human needs a path to challenge an ascription a system has attached to them. This is the internal and external face of RFC-0001's Identity, given a rule of precedence: the internal face leads, and the model owes visibility and recourse wherever an external ascription overrides it.
+
+This RFC builds directly on RFC-0001 (Human) and is the sibling of Relationality. It depends on Informed Consent (the permission account for what is recorded and for any linkage across personas), Privacy & Data Minimization (the default toward minimal identifiers and unlinkability), and Epistemic Authority (the primacy of self-claim). It conditions Participants (a role — Customer, Merchant, Operator — is one kind of context a persona is worn in), Reputation (which attaches per-persona but can never exceed the Human beneath it), Durable Addressability (the stable path a persona is reached at, preserved across change), and Exit & Portability (a Human's standing to take their identity and personas with them when they leave). It does not settle the identity of non-human entities, which their own RFC addresses, though it must eventually say how a Human's proxies and agents present on the Human's behalf.
+
+Identity, in OHM, is therefore not the set of identifiers a system holds, not an account, not a single canonical profile, and not a license to treat a Human's several personas as several Humans. Open questions this RFC will have to resolve as it graduates: how much linkage across personas is the Human's to control versus legitimately ascribed by others (a creditor, a court, or a safety system may have standing to link where the Human would not consent); how per-persona reputation composes when personas are later, consensually, linked; how a persona is handled after the Human's death, or when a proxy presents for a Human who cannot consent for themselves (conditioned by RFC-0001's Personhood position); how identifiers may rotate while preserving continuity of identity (in concert with Durable Addressability); and what the minimum viable identity is for a given interaction, degrading gracefully when less is known — RFC-0001's open question, inherited here and made sharper by the persona.

rfcs/informed-consent.md

@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+---
+slug: informed-consent
+title: Informed Consent
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-05-29'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners: []
+arbiters: []
+tags: []
+---
+
+RFC-0001 (Human) names Informed Consent as one of the entities that every subsequent RFC depends on, and grounds it directly: a Human holds epistemic authority over their experience, body, needs, and intentions, and is the inherent expert on their own meaning. Informed Consent is what turns that authority into a usable constraint. If a Human is the authority on themselves, then any system that models, stores, acts on, or speaks about a Human must have a defensible account of when it is permitted to do so — and that account is consent. This RFC establishes that account as a first-class entity in OHM rather than leaving each downstream RFC to reinvent it.
+
+The need is concrete. Identity asks what may be recorded about a Human; Relationality asks what may be shared between Humans; Agency asks what may be done on a Human's behalf; Wise Speech asks what may be said about or to a Human. Each of these is, underneath, a consent question — and without a shared definition each RFC would answer it differently, leaving the framework with no coherent position on the single question that most determines whether OHM treats Humans as subjects or as data. Consent is also the entity most likely to be flattened into a checkbox if it is not defined carefully, so it deserves the same substantial treatment RFC-0001 gave to the definition of Human.
+
+This RFC will define what consent *is* in OHM and what any valid representation of it must account for, without enumerating every mechanism a deployment might use to obtain it. The intended scope includes: the necessary conditions for consent to be informed (disclosure adequate to the decision, comprehension, and the absence of coercion); the requirement that consent be specific to a purpose rather than blanket, and time-bound rather than perpetual; revocability as a property of the Human and not a favor granted by the system, including what the model owes when consent is withdrawn after data has already been acted upon; the distinction between consent, assent, and authorization-by-proxy for Humans who cannot consent for themselves (children, the incapacitated, the deceased), which RFC-0001's Personhood position directly conditions; and the asymmetry of power between a Human and a system, which means consent obtained under a meaningful imbalance is not freely given. It will also take a position on what consent is *not* — not a one-time gate, not transferable, not inferable from silence or continued use — so that downstream RFCs and deployments inherit a definition that resists the usual erosions.
+
+With Informed Consent defined as a stable entity, the RFCs that follow can be proposed and evaluated against a shared answer to "is this permitted, and by whom," rather than re-litigating the permission question on each one's own terms — the same coherence argument RFC-0001 makes for the definition of Human, applied to the constraint that protects them.

rfcs/load.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: load
+title: Load
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+A Load is the moment a Human moves real money into stored value, and not all loads are equal. This RFC defines Load and the principle that any reward must be funded by a fee the platform avoided, never stacked on a fee it paid — which is why bank rails can earn a discount and cards cannot. It serves Agency and depends on Informed Consent.
+

rfcs/loop-classification.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: loop-classification
+title: Closed- vs Open-Loop Classification
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+Whether stored value is clean store credit or a regulated money-transmission instrument turns on a single line: does value move only among commonly-owned storefronts, or between unaffiliated owners? This RFC defines that closed- versus open-loop classification, keyed to common ownership rather than storefront count. It documents the regulatory line the two-tier model rests on — it does not clear it, which remains a legal matter for counsel.
+

rfcs/no-retroactive-harm.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: no-retroactive-harm
+title: No Retroactive Harm (Terms-Change Governance)
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+Humans park real money and accept terms under a particular set of rules; changing those rules on balances they have already loaded is a retroactive harm. This RFC defines the governance guarantee that the deal cannot be changed out from under existing balances and commitments. It ties Temporality and Informed Consent into a binding constraint, and it is load-bearing precisely because of stored value.
+

rfcs/non-extraction.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: non-extraction
+title: Non-Extraction
+state: active
+id: RFC-0005
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: '2026-06-04'
+graduated_by: ben.stull
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters:
+- ben.stull
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A platform may need to capture value to survive, but the moment it sustains itself by extracting from the very Humans it serves, it has betrayed them. This RFC defines Non-Extraction as the structural commitment that separates this platform from the Shopify-style model of referral fees, payment markups, and sponsored placement. It is the load-bearing claim behind 'better for owners and customers,' and it makes that claim checkable rather than rhetorical.
+
+

rfcs/non-human-entities.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: non-human-entities
+title: Non-Human Entities in OHM
+state: active
+id: RFC-0003
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: '2026-06-04'
+graduated_by: ben.stull
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters:
+- ben.stull
+tags:
+- foundations
+---
+
+OHM is the Open *Human* Model, yet any real platform must also model things that are not humans — commerce nouns, instruments, systems. This RFC establishes how OHM may define a non-human entity at all: always in relation to the Human it serves, never as a free-standing abstraction. It is the conscious hinge on which the model broadens to hold commerce vocabulary without losing its human center, and it gives every later commerce concept a rule to be defined against.
+
+

rfcs/nonextraction.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: nonextraction
+title: Non-Extraction
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A platform may need to capture value to survive, but the moment it sustains itself by extracting from the very Humans it serves, it has betrayed them. This RFC defines Non-Extraction as the structural commitment that separates this platform from the Shopify-style model of referral fees, payment markups, and sponsored placement. It is the load-bearing claim behind 'better for owners and customers,' and it makes that claim checkable rather than rhetorical.
+

rfcs/participants.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: participants
+title: 'Participants: Customer, Merchant, Operator'
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Every commerce interaction involves Humans in distinct roles — the Customer, the Merchant, and the Operator who runs the platform — and the power between them is unequal. This RFC defines these roles as Humans-in-role (a legal entity such as an LLC is not a Human but is controlled by one), and names the power asymmetry plainly: the Operator holds deploy, data, and float power over everyone else. Naming that asymmetry is what lets later RFCs constrain it; the concept serves Agency and Dignity.
+

rfcs/platform-sustainability.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: platform-sustainability
+title: Platform Sustainability
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+Non-Extraction is only credible if there is a concrete, legitimate way for the platform to stay alive. This RFC names those sources — avoided card fees, yield on safeguarded float, and breakage — and explicitly rules out referral fees, ad markups, and payment surcharges. It is the enforcement partner of Non-Extraction: how the platform funds itself without betraying the people it serves.
+

rfcs/price.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: price
+title: Price
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Price is where a platform most easily deceives — through hidden fees, drip pricing, and surprise charges at the end. This RFC defines Price as honest and all-in: the number a Human sees is the number that governs the exchange. It serves Agency and Wise Speech, and underpins the load and checkout mechanics.
+

rfcs/privacy-data-minimization.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: privacy-data-minimization
+title: Privacy & Data Minimization
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A Human has an interior life and the standing to keep most of it private; a platform that hoovers up data treats the person as a resource to be mined. This RFC commits the platform to knowing only what the exchange genuinely requires and no more — surveillance is not the business model. It serves Interiority and Dignity, and sets the default against which every data-collecting mechanic must justify itself.
+

rfcs/privacydataminimization.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: privacydataminimization
+title: Privacy & Data Minimization
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+A Human has an interior life and the standing to keep most of it private; a platform that hoovers up data treats the person as a resource to be mined. This RFC commits the platform to knowing only what the exchange genuinely requires and no more — surveillance is not the business model. It serves Interiority and Dignity, and sets the default against which every data-collecting mechanic must justify itself.
+

rfcs/product-listing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: product-listing
+title: Product & Listing
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+A product listing is the platform's representation of a real good to a real buyer, and it can either inform or mislead. This RFC defines Product and Listing in terms of what they honestly offer the buyer rather than by their conversion potential. It builds on Wise Speech and the Commercial Relationship to keep the catalog truthful.
+

rfcs/recourse-dispute.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: recourse-dispute
+title: Recourse & Dispute Resolution
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+An ethical platform is defined as much by what happens when things go wrong as by its happy path. This RFC defines Recourse: how a wronged Human — buyer or merchant — actually obtains a remedy, and by what fair process. It serves Dignity and fairness, building on the Commercial Relationship.
+

rfcs/reference-pricing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+---
+slug: reference-pricing
+title: Reference Pricing
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-03'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+A reference price is any comparison a listing shows against its current selling price — a struck-through "was" price, a "compare at", an implied discount — and it is a factual claim about the past, not a persuasion device. This RFC defines Reference Pricing so that a displayed former or comparison price must reflect a genuine prior selling price for that good, never a fabricated anchor invented to manufacture the appearance of a discount. It refines Price and applies Wise Speech in Commerce and Agency & Anti-Manipulation to one specific deception — inventing the "before" in order to sell the "after" — and so protects a Human's ability to judge a deal on true information.

rfcs/refund-reversal.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: refund-reversal
+title: Refund, Reversal & Returns
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+If an order is a mutual commitment, there must be a defined way to unwind it — cancellations, returns, and refunds that make a Human whole, including restoring stored value. This RFC defines that reversal path so the unhappy case is treated with the same care as the happy one. It serves Dignity and connects to Recourse.
+

rfcs/relationality.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+---
+slug: relationality
+title: Relationality
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-12'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+arbiters: []
+tags: []
+---
+
+RFC-0001 (Human) establishes Relationality as one of the five foundational properties of a Human — there is no Human that exists outside of relationship — and names it among the words still to be defined. It fixes four commitments this RFC must build on: that a Human is shaped by relationship; that relationships are of many kinds and resist a single canonical type; that relationships are asymmetric, so that two parties experience the same relationship differently and the model must not collapse it into a single shared object; and that Relationality is the medium of consent, since most of what a Human consents to, they consent to in relationship. Where the sibling RFC, Identity, governs what may be recorded *about* a Human, Relationality governs what may be shared *between* Humans — and between Humans and the systems and agents that act within those relationships.
+
+The unit Relationality governs is the **flow**: a movement of information, recognition, or presentation from one party to another across a specific relationship. This RFC's central position is that a flow is governed by the norms of the relationship it occurs in, not by a global permission. Information a Human shares appropriately in one relationship — a purchase history with a merchant they chose, a confidence with a friend, a medical fact with a clinician — is not thereby available to flow into another; carrying it across contexts is a distinct act that the receiving context's norms must independently justify. A system that models consent as a single share / do-not-share switch, rather than as a property of each flow in its context, has already discarded the thing Relationality exists to protect. Appropriateness is contextual: the same disclosure that is ordinary in one relationship is a violation in another, and the difference is the relationship, not the data.
+
+Because a relationship is not a single shared object, a flow is directional and per-edge. What A discloses to B is consented and scoped from A's side, for A's purpose, within A's relationship to B; B's reciprocal view, and anything B would carry onward, are their own flows under their own consent. The model must not represent a relationship as one mutual record both parties equally own, because that erases whose disclosure it was and whose authority governs it. This matters most where a relationship *produces* data — a transaction, a conversation, a shared history — over which each party holds a real but partial claim; the model must keep those claims distinct rather than dissolving them into common property that either party may treat as wholly theirs.
+
+The question Identity calls linkability appears here as **recognition across relationships**: whether a Human known in one relationship is recognized as the same Human in another. Seen from the relational side, recognition is itself a flow — it carries a Human's presence from one context into a second — and is therefore governed by the same contextual norms and the same purpose-bound, revocable consent as any other flow. A Human may be recognized across two relationships they consent to bridge and remain unrecognized across two they do not, without inconsistency. The cross-context recognition that produces belonging, continuity, and earned trust between Humans is valuable precisely because it is consented; the identical mechanism, unconsented, is surveillance. The model must make the two distinguishable, and must put the choice between them with the Human.
+
+RFC-0001 holds that Relationality is the medium of consent, and this RFC makes the dependency explicit: consent to a flow inherits Informed Consent's conditions — specific to a purpose, time-bound rather than perpetual, and revocable as a property of the Human rather than a favor of the system. Revocation raises the hardest relational question, which this RFC must answer rather than dodge: what is owed when a Human withdraws consent to a flow after information has already moved and been acted upon, including where it has propagated transitively — A shared to B, B relied on it, C now depends on B's reliance. The model owes at least that revocation reach forward to halt further flow, and that data already propagated be addressed rather than treated as permanently surrendered the instant it was first shared. What more is owed — recall, deletion, correction, or only cessation — is the question graduation must settle.
+
+Relationality extends beyond the human. RFC-0001 holds that Humans are in relationship not only with other Humans but with communities, institutions, the non-human world, and the systems that mediate all of these. An agent acting on a Human's behalf is a relational participant, not a neutral pipe: what it may carry between Humans, and what it may be told about a Human in order to act, are relational flows governed here — in concert with Agency, which governs what may be done on a Human's behalf, and with the RFC on non-human entities. A relationship mediated by a machine does not shed its norms because a machine stands in the middle; the machine inherits them.
+
+This RFC builds on RFC-0001 (Human), is the sibling of Identity, and depends on Informed Consent and Privacy & Data Minimization for the permission and the default-minimization each flow is judged against, and on Epistemic Authority for whose account of a relationship leads where the parties disagree. It conditions Participants (Customer, Merchant, and Operator are relational positions carrying built-in asymmetries of power), Reputation (vouching and endorsement are relational flows, and reputation moves across relationships), Trust & Safety, and Recourse & Dispute (a contested flow needs a path to remedy). Relationality is not a single shared object the platform owns, not a global consent flag, and not a license to move what was shared in one context into another. Open questions it will have to resolve as it graduates: how a flow's scope and purpose are represented so that a machine can honor them; how a contextual-integrity violation is detected and adjudicated; how joint data with competing claims is governed; how far revocation can reach over data already propagated; and how transitive flows are bounded, so that consent granted in one relationship does not silently authorize a chain of others.

rfcs/reputation.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: reputation
+title: Reputation
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+Reputation systems guide trust but are themselves a source of harm — fake reviews, review extortion, and reputation-as-lock-in. This RFC defines Reputation as its own concept, including its hazards, rather than leaving it as a footnote under reviews. It aims at trust that does not create new ways to coerce or trap a Human.
+

rfcs/settlement.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: settlement
+title: Settlement
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+Value is not real until it has settled, yet platforms routinely act on what is merely shown or pending. This RFC defines Settlement and the principle that 'shown is not received, and received is not settled,' so the platform releases value and goods only against funds it actually holds. It serves Epistemic Authority and is load-bearing for both online checkout and the in-person point of sale.
+

rfcs/stored-value.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: stored-value
+title: Stored Value / Credit
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- payments
+---
+
+Stored Value is the root money concept the ecommerce platform's credit model hangs on: value a Human has loaded and now holds on the platform, deliberately constrained — not cashable, not transferable out, and explicitly not a stablecoin. The constraint is not incidental; it *is* the definition, and it must be defined in relation to the Human whose money it is. Removing cash-out closes the redemption-fraud vector and the money-transmission trigger — but it also removes an exit the Human would otherwise have, so the concept must hold that tension in the open rather than hide it behind 'store credit.'
+
+Establishing Stored Value as a first-class OHM entity lets every downstream mechanic — Load, Settlement, Discount, Breakage, Float — cite one contestable definition of 'what the balance is' instead of each re-deriving it. It serves Agency (the Human's own money, with its exit deliberately removed) and Temporality (a balance persists, and a person's relationship to it changes over time). It is also where OHM broadens to hold a commerce noun, defined in service of the Human rather than the ledger.
+

rfcs/transparency-traceability.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: transparency-traceability
+title: Transparency & Traceability
+state: super-draft
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- governance
+---
+
+Ethics that cannot be checked are just claims. This RFC defines the discipline that every operational mechanic must cite the concept RFC it serves, so the platform's behavior is auditable and traceable back to a stated human commitment. It is the spine that keeps the whole corpus honest — the answer to how 'ethical' becomes verifiable rather than asserted.
+

rfcs/trust-safety.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: trust-safety
+title: Trust & Safety / Harm Prevention
+state: active
+id: RFC-0004
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: '2026-06-04'
+graduated_by: ben.stull
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters:
+- ben.stull
+tags:
+- commerce
+---
+
+A marketplace that admits any seller and any good is not neutral; it is negligent toward the Humans it exposes to fraud and danger. This RFC defines who may sell and what may be sold — prohibited, dangerous, and counterfeit goods, and scam prevention — as a duty of harm prevention distinct from after-the-fact recourse. It protects buyers and honest merchants alike.
+
+

rfcs/wise-speech-commerce.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+slug: wise-speech-commerce
+title: Wise Speech in Commerce
+state: active
+id: RFC-0006
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: '2026-06-04'
+graduated_by: ben.stull
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters:
+- ben.stull
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Listings, prices, and reviews are speech the platform either keeps honest or lets deceive. This RFC applies OHM's foundational Wise Speech value to commerce: descriptions that are truthful, prices that do not mislead, and a platform that does not amplify deceptive speech for its own gain. It protects a Human's ability to choose on the basis of true information.
+
+

rfcs/wisespeechcommerce.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+slug: wisespeechcommerce
+title: Wise Speech in Commerce
+state: withdrawn
+id: null
+repo: null
+proposed_by: ben.stull@wiggleverse.org
+proposed_at: '2026-06-01'
+graduated_at: null
+graduated_by: null
+owners:
+- ben.stull
+arbiters: []
+tags:
+- ethics
+---
+
+Listings, prices, and reviews are speech the platform either keeps honest or lets deceive. This RFC applies OHM's foundational Wise Speech value to commerce: descriptions that are truthful, prices that do not mislead, and a platform that does not amplify deceptive speech for its own gain. It protects a Human's ability to choose on the basis of true information.
+