The Architecture of Trust: Engineering for Agency
Data agency
In the age of SaaS, “control” often means “you can export a file if the service is still online.”
For communities that intend to endure, that isn’t enough.
When we architected Kourtra, we made a fundamental decision:
The Community is the primary entity, not the individual account.
In many products, the account is the atomic unit. People join groups. If an account disappears, the community’s records can become incomplete or hard to interpret.
In Kourtra, we treat the Community as a first-class entity that holds its own records. People come and go; the Community’s continuity should remain legible.
Append-only history
Every major change in Kourtra—a Choice, a policy update, a stewardship assignment—creates an append-only Ledger entry.
This is both a product behavior and a design stance:
- History is preserved. Past decisions aren’t rewritten; they’re superseded by new entries.
- Accountability is explicit. Entries include who authorized the change and when it happened.
A portable archive (in progress)
We’re working toward a standard “Portable Community Archive.”
The goal: a Community should be able to take its Foundations, People, Choices, and Ledger history and move it elsewhere if it ever decides to leave.
Because agency requires the ability to choose.