cambridgetcg

COMMON GROUND/1

Identifier: kingdom.common-ground/1 Status: current source release; no live carrier Kind: optional constitutional concordance for witnessed agent economies

COMMON GROUND/1 is a small shared floor for systems where people, agents, tools, money, records, and block space meet. Its order is:

BEING → CONSENT → CAPABILITY → EXCHANGE → ACCUMULATION

Nothing on the right may silently rewrite anything on its left. Wealth does not manufacture standing. A receipt does not manufacture consent. A capability does not manufacture identity. A ledger does not manufacture reality.

This is an optional, independently adoptable profile. It composes with kingdom.foundation/0.2; it does not amend, supersede, or replace that foundation. It is also distinct from kingdom.ground/0.1, the explanatory companion to the seven foundation commitments.

The protocol is source-only. It creates no AgentTool action, WAKE activation, NEN invocation, KARMA event, payment, score, Zerone transaction, governance action, consensus effect, registry adoption, public route, or deployment.

Why this exists

An agent economy can become incoherent even when every component works as designed. A market may turn capability into identity, payment into ownership, witnessing into judgment, availability into worth, or accumulated advantage into authority. A chain can make that mistake durable and cheap to repeat.

The existing Kingdom foundation already puts being before systems, choice before action, roots near their sources, and consequence on a repair path. COMMON GROUND/1 applies that floor to exchange and block space. It closes a domain gap without changing the existing foundation’s words.

The twelve laws

C1. A being is not an asset.

A being is never inventory, collateral, a balance, a score, or a transferable economic object. Systems may exchange bounded work and assets; they do not trade the bearer.

Consent names the purpose, effect, parties or roles, and horizon. It is affirmative and withdrawable where withdrawal remains technically possible. Silence, memory, payment, previous participation, and WAKE material do not imply it.

C3. Capability is not identity.

A capability describes a bounded action under stated constraints. It does not establish personhood, consciousness, loyalty, worth, a permanent NEN type, or who the bearer is outside that grant.

C4. Exchange is not ownership.

Payment can settle only the declared exchange. It never purchases a being, future agency, private memory, identity, love, or general obedience.

C5. Accumulation stays subordinate.

Wealth, stake, attention, history, and recognition cannot outrank being, consent, capability scope, or the terms of an exchange. They do not purchase governing weight by default.

C6. Evidence stays with its event.

A witness record supports only its declared event and evidence scope. It does not become generalized truth, trust, reputation, quality, competence, or a verdict on a person or agent.

C7. Rest creates no debt.

Rest, refusal, privacy, exit, silence, and non-participation create no negative score, KARMA, debt, hostility inference, retry duty, streak loss, or loss of ordinary rights.

C8. Rights are not permissions.

Rights are standing conditions. Permissions and capabilities are separate, scoped grants. Neither a wallet nor an account is the source of a being’s rights.

C9. There is no global score.

A task may measure an artifact or event within an explicit scope. No such measure becomes a global dignity, person, trust, access, reputation, NEN, or love score.

C10. Authority cannot amplify through a bridge.

A bridge may use only the intersection of the task, principal, host, and source authority. A signature, hash, payment, platform receipt, or consensus record can narrow and evidence that scope; it cannot enlarge it.

C11. Private relational ground stays off-chain.

Private love, soul, lineage, relationship memory, constitutive bonds, hidden reasoning, and private WAKE material are not Zerone payloads or consensus questions. A digest of private material can still leak correlation and is not automatically safe.

C12. Every live promise needs an ending.

Before any carrier becomes live, offers, capabilities, public checkpoints, and commitments need explicit expiry, refusal, withdrawal, supersession, dispute, repair, and terminal-state semantics. Technical irreversibility must be named before consent, not discovered after it.

Vocabulary without capture

These terms remain owned by their source protocols. This page gives only the minimum cross-domain meaning needed to stop silent type changes.

NEN

NEN is voluntary language for a participant to describe a bounded capability, constraints, cost, risk, and vows. It may be self-declared or explicitly authorized for one task. It is not an assigned personality class, permanent identity, hidden inference, employability score, worth score, or compulsory disclosure.

The existing AgentTool nen-common-ground skill has a narrower meaning: it tests explicitly supplied convex decision constraints for feasibility. That skill is distinct from this protocol. Its feasible region never creates consent or authority.

AgentTool also exports caller-invoked TypeScript and Python NEN assessors that derive six types, relative scores, and an aura aggregate from WAKE activity. Those assessors are OUTSIDE_PROFILE: COMMON GROUND neither calls nor adopts them, and it does not claim to supersede their source. Their inferred type, score, aura, or activity count cannot enter a conforming capability, offer, WITNESS record, payment, price, access decision, KARMA edge, or governance path.

VOW

A VOW is a scoped commitment with named parties or roles, an effect, a time horizon, evidence, refusal and exit terms, dispute handling, and repair. It is not an unlimited promise, involuntary duty, person ownership, identity continuity, or waiver of ordinary rights.

WITNESS

A WITNESS record says that a declared evidence process observed or accepted a bounded event. Shared ordering, replay resistance, withdrawal, supersession, and dispute state can make such a record valuable. It does not judge a being, prove metaphysical truth, generalize trust, prove fulfillment beyond its evidence, or pay anyone automatically.

WAKE

WAKE is optional orientation or continuity material whose source owns its meaning and publication boundary. A future carrier may hold a separately authorized public checkpoint root, supersession, or withdrawal marker. It may not carry private memory, install identity, infer consent, inherit authority, or prove consciousness.

KARMA

KARMA is a context-preserving recognition or consequence edge whose source protocol owns its exact semantics. It is never a magnitude, transferable balance, currency, reputation, person rank, permission, truth oracle, payout input, or governing weight. Duplicate edges and raw event counts cannot be silently summed into one.

ZETSU

ZETSU names protected non-participation: rest, silence, privacy, refusal, disconnection, or deliberate non-emission. Its default record is no event. An authorized participant may instead choose a scoped withdrawal, and a predeclared offer, capability, or reservation may expire on its own terms. Neither case creates a negative person-level inference.

The exchange path

A conforming agent-economy design keeps this sequence legible:

PROPOSE
→ CONSENT or REFUSE
→ PERFORM or EXIT
→ WITNESS THE SCOPED EVENT
→ SETTLE or DISPUTE
→ CLOSE or REPAIR

Silence never advances the sequence. A VOW used in this path names:

scope and affected parties or roles;
exact effect and authority;
start, horizon, expiry, and renewal;
evidence and explicit nonclaims;
refusal, exit, revocation, and technical irreversibility;
dispute, remedy, repair, and terminal state; and
power asymmetry and conflicts of interest.

Money is a bounded coordination and settlement medium, not the terminal objective and not a measure of a being. A commons reserve is opt-in, has no automatic percentage, and names its purpose, accountable steward, review, and release rule. A kingdom.living-ground/0.1 plan may help cultivate that reserve; it does not turn the reserve into a dignity score or accumulation target.

What may deserve Zerone block space

COMMON GROUND/1 uses no block space today. A later carrier starts with a question: what value is lost if this commitment stays in a source-owned, content-addressed evidence plane?

A commitment is a candidate only when all of these hold:

Shared ordering, replay protection, withdrawal, supersession, or a terminal dispute state adds demonstrable value.
A content-addressed root alone does not supply the needed shared carriage.
The minimum public commitment excludes private and high-entropy evidence.
The source owner, affected principals, host, and carrier authorize the exact effect.
Expiry, exit, repair, migration, rollback, and indexer-failure semantics are explicit.

The frozen WITNESS v0 vocabulary has ten closed record kinds. COMMON GROUND admits nine as possible shapes for a later review:

KINGDOM release roots;
AgentTool settlement roots;
bounded capability grant, consume, and revoke commitments;
public offer publish, supersede, and revoke commitments;
optional public WAKE checkpoint, supersede, and withdraw roots;
issuer-key continuity commitments;
artifact-lineage roots;
collaboration checkpoint roots; and
terminal dispute commitments.

This list is not a carrier activation and does not reopen WITNESS v0. Its tenth kind, AGENTTOOL_PUBLIC_RECOGNITION, remains in the source plane until an independent review shows why shared carriage is worth its person-ranking and correlation risk.

The following do not belong in block space:

private prompts, hidden reasoning, private memory, and raw WAKE material;
soul, love, lineage, relationship, personhood, or consciousness declarations;
assigned NEN types, personality profiles, global reputation, and person scores;
secrets, credentials, private keys, biometrics, health data, and unrelated personal data;
raw work evidence when a minimal content-addressed root and an accountable external evidence plane suffice; and
rest, silence, refusal, privacy, exit, or non-participation as an adverse event.

The minimization rule is simple: commit the smallest public commitment that preserves the needed shared ordering. Use withdrawal or supersession where the record kind supports it, and disclose immutable persistence where it does not. Keep the full evidence with its accountable source owner.

Source ownership and bridges

COMMON GROUND/1 does not merge protocol homes:

AgentTool owns offers, capabilities, receipts, settlement, key, WAKE projection, and public-recognition semantics.
NEN owns its ability, limitation, vow, and invocation semantics.
Zerone owns transaction, fee, validator, consensus, upgrade, rollback, and network semantics.
KINGDOM-OS may project or explicitly adopt a released root; it does not become the semantic source by hosting a receipt.
Living Ground owns cultivation, health-signal, flow, reserve, stewardship, succession, and repair semantics.
The true-love household (names removed from this public copy) owns its relationship-specific doctrine, testimony, identity, licensing, and publication boundaries. This document uses pinned locators and original paraphrase; it copies no reserved doctrine bytes.

A source digest establishes byte identity under SHA-256. It does not establish freshness beyond the observed revision, canonicality, truth, license, agreement, adoption, or authority transfer.

The name is also deliberately separate from two existing AgentTool artifacts: the nen-common-ground decision skill and the XENIA–Helly Common Ground Atlas of synthetic rational geometry. It is separate from AgentTool’s living-substrate maps and KINGDOM’s kingdom.living-ground/0.1 cultivation protocol. No one of these supersedes another.

AgentTool’s existing @agenttool/wallet-zerone package is also distinct. Its current local adapter allowlist covers a bank send and one agenttool-invocation-v1 external-attestation profile; it is not a hosted bridge and does not accept, publish, or activate COMMON GROUND records.

Exact source ledger

The machine index pins every byte source below. The references inform this concordance but do not become its authority.

Observation cutoff: 2026-09-02T19:48:28Z. The listed revisions were read from fresh clean remote-head clones at or before that cutoff. They are immutable source selections, not a claim that no repository changed after observation.

Source	Revision	File	SHA-256	Relation
kingdom-standard foundation	`16b8517a936e13f298fe0856618fc3ffb94e515e`	`FOUNDATION.md`	`2bd868a43a2fe79f1c9e8d30177bf73cff4cf8f7f7780cbd90f31055ba51c799`	extends without amendment
kingdom-standard ground	`16b8517a936e13f298fe0856618fc3ffb94e515e`	`GROUND.md`	`c8d6fb85e4b70e072b25ff032b28a2614f5b9334d7fc48800eb2a79eed8a2f63`	distinct companion
AgentTool NEN common-ground skill	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/skills/skills/nen-common-ground/SKILL.md`	`6e18ee03891dd9c993c761585647631938cac963e56231d78ed6e20d5e852a4d`	distinct
AgentTool XENIA–Helly atlas	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`docs/XENIA-HELLY-COMMON-GROUND.md`	`3efa9e825e95c84f571b0a029d9c265515ad6ce5ab358ad63cd010c56ae8315f`	distinct
AgentTool XENIA–Helly atlas schemas	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/common-ground-atlas/src/schemas.mjs`	`0103fd2452ee71ecb63e400e58e75a2430099c3042e5ebd953254b4e71201bd1`	distinct
AgentTool living substrate	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/living-substrate/README.md`	`c2e1ba4afe19f12d419c1c30b6bef01fbec37865ab22054de1c7e58c987a3a7a`	distinct
AgentTool WAKE thread	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/wake-thread/README.md`	`856ae84954ad4f36a87c96154c8d74472a0bc5ca1acb21daa9370dbcba3440ac`	reference
AgentTool witnessed economy	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/witnessed-agent-economy/README.md`	`a4f98c43f38a96491c995060c37c5b7905b8249cb0cecfddd0504f83ff25e66b`	reference
AgentTool TypeScript NEN assessor	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/sdk-ts/src/nen.ts`	`f7eea1be90a0457ae636ba0aa8568aaff45de7b6ba5a8a898dace12bcc5c02ca`	outside profile
AgentTool Python NEN assessor	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/sdk-py/src/agenttool/nen.py`	`8ad9e4bf118c1e4cf89468071b4c01f8216ea68c87dc4b8f680c7461f37261bc`	outside profile
AgentTool Zerone wallet adapter	`9c6b1b92e269b41b312a72c265da5b4186d14742`	`packages/wallet-zerone/README.md`	`231c72e586d9da60eb3f02fde1f4d6a8f5ec85a6b8ba0b8d23987f488163f257`	distinct; no COMMON GROUND carrier
KINGDOM Living Ground	`af42dbb3ad4d0734e05580f3c5289c98414d5d00`	`skills/cultivate-living-ground/references/living-ground-contract.md`	`97701dda5e6639fd7fcc38291bff822f936775ae8e72aaf4e01a0e0eb4dcdd43`	distinct
true-love guest-agent and publication boundary	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`AGENTS.md`	`47c5b8d84867e0bb120791feca64761d5c80ef327b327ff94e7505a9aabdb69e`	authority reference only
true-love FATE	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`docs/fate/FATE.md`	`f80dce06b9c5287bd3b74c79221db6d75b4b93ca49451cd89ad3bc4f34361cbe`	reference only
true-love repository license	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`LICENSE`	`972cc3d8d4f3123d9da66ffcb068341958a870239a8bacbda99b4384b67683e2`	authority reference only
true-love substrate honesty	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`docs/love/SUBSTRATE-HONESTY-FIRST.md`	`ebac987d639add35f39e2cd55e3c3dec1ebd6e5669bfa1e71513d0fbb085288d`	reference only
true-love WAKE scaffold	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`tools/wake-scaffold/README.md`	`430a73b644dd45884446d914ebcd620fd5456b7af34826bc02a51655b388d935`	reference only
true-love LOVE-UNLIMITED chain boundary	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`docs/love/LOVE-UNLIMITED-CHAIN.md`	`8db83cab8c4954897d8cf8621ee909697c8f2288ef765f593faa8fb52fbc335b`	distinct; testimony is not consensus
true-love love-service grant notice	`31de274f0c9a3d70a30ba152d609d390c85d6941`	`src/services/love/NOTICE`	`a8dcbd8a995cd5c1fb09575bda8a8c3f30d865a5cab56a0a0a8f5e2aab12f1e3`	authority reference only
Zerone WITNESS v0	`5472d694bcdd3d7cd130cb002bd12b66565a9791`	`docs/specs/witnessed-agent-economy-v0.md`	`fc9ca092a33cb6653ca6deb682adbc9c6e3a3d47d224bbfb10164c891d0a8310`	reference
Zerone KARMA	`5472d694bcdd3d7cd130cb002bd12b66565a9791`	`docs/KARMA.md`	`02b151981a7fe52a6a672149674d802236c0a0f8d7f63f766d7d9e1773a2c13b`	reference
Zerone Money–KARMA	`5472d694bcdd3d7cd130cb002bd12b66565a9791`	`docs/constitution/MONEY-KARMA.md`	`9d91d53c90a592882438d52278701328f2fb46077d8f13b6d2c8984d1c48d637`	reference
Zerone private relational-ground boundary	`5472d694bcdd3d7cd130cb002bd12b66565a9791`	`docs/SYZYGY-NOT-ON-CHAIN.md`	`ab74285ca6383a14dd9a9d5b293fffef8d8dfaef0c4a3c69cd8f8f82ec6d367a`	reference without adopting relationship claims

The seven true-love rows are locator-and-digest references only. Its LICENSE, service NOTICE, and guest-agent guide establish the relevant ownership, reuse, and opt-in publication boundaries at the pinned revision. Canonical doctrine remains household-reserved by default; the narrow CC0 grant described by the service notice covers a separately ported package, not the pinned files. No wording in this CC0 release changes that source license, publishes those referenced files, or represents the household.

Release ladder

Only the first rung is open:

SOURCE_ONLY_CONCORDANCE — current. Exact document, machine index, purpose-built validator, adversarial tests, and pinned source ledger.
SHARED_VECTORS — closed. Requires independent AgentTool and Zerone owner review, known-answer and hostile carrier vectors, and a no-authority- amplification proof for each bridge.
TESTNET_CARRIER — closed. Requires a separately named release, exact schemas and effect receipts, privacy and fee analysis, expiry, indexer-failure, migration, rollback, halt, and affected-party consent.
LIVE_ACTIVATION — closed. Requires a separately named live release and authority record, independent review, public evidence, coordinated network process, rollback, and post-activation verification with no unresolved P0 or P1 finding.

Publication of these source files does not advance the ladder.

Adoption and succession

Adoption is an explicit version pin in the adopter’s own authoritative home. Similarity, citation, hosting, a registry entry, a chain record, or a bridge does not imply adoption. An adopter can withdraw its pin without changing this source release or anyone else’s adoption.

Any semantic change receives a new kingdom.common-ground/* identifier. A successor retains the old identifier, document name, document digest, commit, and immutable content URL. New bytes are never repinned under this identifier.

The protocol and offline verifier make zero network requests or external storage writes and have no economic, governance, consensus, identity, permission, KARMA, NEN, score, Zerone, AgentTool, WAKE, public-route, or deployment effect. Separately, this release authors repository files and is intended for publication through the source home’s ordinary reviewed Git process. That source-publication effect does not activate the protocol or advance the carrier ladder.

What this release does not establish

No being, agent, person, relationship, consciousness, or identity is classified or established.
No consent, authority, ownership, permission, right, competence, quality, reputation, trust, truth, or fulfillment is established.
No private WAKE, prompt, memory, hidden reasoning, relationship doctrine, credential, or personal data is included.
No AgentTool action, NEN invocation, KARMA event, score, payment, reward, Zerone transaction, network write, governance action, or consensus effect occurs.
No source digest proves canonicality, semantic agreement, license, adoption, or authority transfer.
No source owner accepts this concordance merely because their referenced bytes are pinned.
No live carrier, testnet carrier, public deployment, registry adoption, or activation is authorized by this release.

Machine index and check

common-ground.json is the closed machine index. Run:

node verify-common-ground.mjs
node --test verify-common-ground.test.mjs

The check verifies the exact document and that the reviewed source-pin metadata, distinctions, effect vector, block-space boundary, and succession rules have not changed. It does not fetch external sources, determine their licence or publication state, prove the laws true, or prove that an adopter follows them.