We are not a consultancy and we do not sell decks. We build systems. Every piece of work has to run cleanly from something a person did to value coming back to them — and at any moment we can say exactly where a project sits on that line.
In plain words: do it, show it, check it, record it, use it, give back. Six steps, in order. We do not fold the checking into the recording, and we do not call an activity worthwhile before we have said what would count as proof. What each step means →
When they get in the way of what is convenient or fast, the principles win.
Every problem is a system: what people are rewarded for, how they behave, what the rules say, and what happens next. Map it before proposing anything. Name who is involved, what moves between them, what loops back, and how it breaks.
Rooted in Indic philosophy — balance, dharma, care for what we hold in common, and not doing violence to yourself — alongside plain modern ethics: ask permission, collect as little as possible, take nothing that is not offered, and treat every contributor with dignity.
Open formats by default, tools that work with other tools, built for public good. Anything that locks people in has to be argued for. What we write and design is Creative Commons unless there is a reason otherwise.
Every piece of work leaves behind something that runs and people who understand it. We judge it by what is still there after we leave.
Everything we do gets written into one or more of three ledgers — three separate books. We always know which one we are writing to. What each ledger holds →
When something spans more than one kind, we pick the main one and note the other in the evidence.
Teaching, tutoring, mentoring, running a class, writing curriculum.
Trade training, craft skill, professional upskilling, proven competence.
Oral tradition, art, community ritual, keeping a language alive, passing culture on.
Tending an ecosystem, caring for water bodies, growing trees, recording what changes.
Units cannot be sold or transferred. They are credentials — proof of what someone did — not investments. One activity earns one main unit, and we never pile several onto a single unchecked activity.
We start at the lightest level the stakes allow, and never build third-party checking into a small first pilot. The four levels →
For anything involving children, we need written consent from a parent or guardian before any AI touches their data, before any review, and before anything is recorded. This is a hard stop, not a guideline. The full policy is public.
Could Sita Tai — a semi-literate woman in a Konkan village who teaches five children in her home to read — take part in this, have her work checked, and get real recognition for it, without being embarrassed, without a fight, and without depending on anything she cannot reach or afford?— The Sita Tai Test. The architecture exists to make her contribution constitutionally visible.
Software can draft, suggest and model. It never writes a real record or a checked claim on its own. A person signs off, every time.
We do not publish a claim until its evidence is filed, stored so it cannot be quietly swapped, and locked to the people allowed to see it. No evidence, no claim, no unit.
Everything we publish carries a version number and says where it came from. Nothing counts as the real version without a date and a source.
Impact Units are not investments, and anything that is regulated runs on a separate track. We never build anything that blurs the two.
A tidy framework with no real data, no decisions and no constraints is not finished work. It is preparation for finished work, and we say so.
If all a session produces is more structure and nothing that meets the real world, we flag it. The point is a checked result, not a prettier diagram.
The programs are where all of this meets the real world.