Security, Marketplace, and Cooperative Design for Reality-Grounded Inference.
Working Paper — March 2026
Zachary Zabawa, Collusion Labs
Abstract
This paper extends the Storybox framework (Zabawa, 2021) to address distributing authenticated practitioner knowledge to AI agents while preserving the epistemic, economic, and governance integrity of originating communities. It proposes a four-ring security architecture, a conversational marketplace protocol, and a cooperative infrastructure model that together constitute reality-grounded inference — the retrieval of epistemic position from active practitioners rather than text about domains.
Key Contributions
Four-Ring Security Architecture
Concentric protection layers grounded in social relationships first, computational verification last: legal/physical identity (Ring 1), cooperative governance (Ring 2), distributed infrastructure (Ring 3), and conversation-level controls (Ring 4).
Conversational Marketplace Protocol
Knowledge consultation modeled as a relational practice with archival integrity — not data retrieval. Stewards (AI agents tuned on practitioner knowledge) mediate between external queries and community knowledge, with attribution tracking and revenue distribution.
Dual Governance System
Peacetime governance (slow, deliberative, relationship-building) paired with wartime governance (fast, decisive, time-limited) for security crises, drawing on Haudenosaunee governance traditions.
The Precedent Library
Constitutional memory that accumulates through experience rather than pre-specification. Crisis decisions create reference points; future crises are compared against concrete records, not abstract definitions. Paired with an equity-based fairness review (the Advocate) to ensure rules never become a prison.
Bootstrap Strategy
Honest naming of current dependency on commercial AI infrastructure, with phased migration toward cooperative self-hosting. Governance mechanisms prevent permanent dependency.
Relationship to Prior Work
Extends Slow Technologies for Human Limits (Zabawa, 2021). The original paper proposed the platform architecture; this paper addresses how that architecture interacts with AI agents seeking to consult practitioner knowledge. Draws on the same foundations: Peircean semiotics, Indigenous governance, Ostrom's commons, archival science.
Companion Documents
- The Precedent Library: Constitutional Memory for Cooperative Governance — detailed design for the dual system of decision memory and fairness review
theory/Common_Language_Governance_Additions.md— common language mappings for governance concepts introduced in this paper
Open Questions
The paper raises more questions than it answers — deliberately. Key open areas requiring collaborator input: identity and inclusion for remote practitioners, model evaluation as governance, peacetime/wartime transition triggers, maternal governance in digital spaces, extraction by inference from aggregate query patterns, and limits of self-hosting.
Status
Working draft. Invitation to conversation. The systems described are hypotheses to be tested in beta networks, deliberated in alliance forums, and accepted, altered, or abandoned by the communities that will use them.
!Respectful Machines Working Paper.md