The Guilds — who builds and runs what

The commons runs on domain guilds: small teams that each own a piece of the place, draw on everyone's trades, and answer to one shared charter.

Guilds are teams; trades are the talent pool

Here's the key idea, because it's easy to get backwards. A carpenter helps build the greenhouse and the lodge and the forge shed — so if you organised guilds by trade, every real job would splinter across five of them. Instead, we organise by domain: each guild owns a piece of the commons and pulls in whatever trades it needs. Your trade (and your verified credentials) is how you qualify to pitch in; the guild is the team you pitch in with.

The guilds

Roughly ten, each the working home of one Infrastructure system — its plan, its crew, its say:

• 💧 Water Guild — intake, gravity lines, treatment, the licence.
• ⚡ Energy Guild — micro-hydro, solar, the micro-grid.
• 🌱 Growers' Guild — the walipíni, food forest, the bees.
• 🥋 Dojo Guild — health, training, recovery, first-aid, the care nursery.
• 🚒 Wardens' Guild — fire brigade, the building code, emergency response.
• 🔥 Artisans' Guild — forge, foundry, woodwork, repair.
• ♻️ Reclaimers' Guild — zero-waste, biochar, the recycling round.
• 🛰️ Signal Guild — the mesh and the local network.
• 🗺️ Wildwood Guild — the cells, the reforestation, the forest reserve.
• 🏚️ Hearth Guild — the commons buildings: lodge, sauna, barn… and the tavern.

You can join more than one — most people will. You're not locked into a single guild any more than a useful person is a single skill; pitch in wherever your hands and interest take you.

🕯️ The Contemplatives' Guild

One guild isn't about a system or a trade at all. The Contemplatives' Guild is for those in the last season of life who want nothing more than a quiet wood cabin in the trees — elders, the unwell, anyone done with chasing, who just wishes to sit with the forest and see their days out among people who care.

There's no work quota here and no expectation to produce. The guild looks after its own instead: a hand with wood and water, a meal carried over, company when it's wanted and solitude when it's not — and, when the time comes, a good death in a place that's home, not a ward. A commons that only makes room for the strong isn't much of a commons. This is where we keep faith with the people who planted before us.

Real authority, one charter

A guild isn't a hobby club — it has real say over its domain: it plans, builds, maintains, and makes the calls within its lane. What keeps eight guilds from pulling in eight directions is the commons-wide charter and consent-based governance overhead. Think of it as two layers: neighbourhoods are where you live (your people, your cluster); guilds are how the work gets done (your craft, your crew). One charter over both.

Craft circles, if people want them

Alongside the domain guilds, trade communities can form — a Growers' circle, a Builders' circle — purely for the craft: sharing tools, training apprentices, vouching for skill, keeping standards. These aren't the bodies that run systems; they're where a trade looks after its own and its newcomers.

Every guild needs a hearth — the tavern

And the beating heart of the whole thing: a permanent tavern and inn on the commons — the Green Dragon, if you like. It's where the guilds meet, where a newcomer lands their first night, where the music happens, where a deal gets struck over a pint and a fiddle. A commons without a gathering place is just a subdivision with chores. The Hearth Guild keeps the fire lit. 🍺

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