The community comes first. The layer adapts.
All principles · 02 / Community before infrastructure
The community's need to coordinate, govern, and keep a shared record comes first; the layer is built around it.
In practice
The workflow first
The layer is what changes
Autonomy preserved
Test
If a community must change how it works to fit the infrastructure, rather than the infrastructure adapting to the community, the order has been inverted.
Read the full principle
Principle
The shared layer exists to serve the community. When the infrastructure and the community pull in different directions, the community wins.
Meaning
The community's need to coordinate, govern, and keep a shared record comes first; the layer is built around it. The inversion is the common failure: a coordination layer is made powerful, and the shape of the infrastructure ends up defining what communities can be. When the two disagree, the layer changes.
In practice
Design starts from a community's workflow rather than from an architecture diagram.
When a community's need cannot be met by the current shared layer, the layer is the thing to fix.
Infrastructure decisions are reviewed against what they do to community autonomy.
Product pressure
This principle favors:
community workflows as the design input
shared-layer changes driven by community need
autonomy preserved across versions and upgrades
resistance to features that serve the platform's convenience at the cost of the community's agency
Test
If a community must change how it works to fit the infrastructure, rather than the infrastructure adapting to the community, the order has been inverted.