| # |
Institution |
Priority Level |
Why It Matters at v1 |
What Must Be Figured Out at This Stage
|
| 1 |
Governance |
Primary |
A 24-person cohort fails quickly without clear decision-making and role clarity. |
Decision rights, meeting cadence, founder authority vs team autonomy, escalation path, ownership of final calls
|
| 2 |
Education |
Primary |
The whole system depends on rapid skill acquisition and learning-by-doing. |
Training sequence, onboarding flow, apprenticeship method, evaluation of competence, documentation of learning
|
| 3 |
Finance |
Primary |
Even a mission-driven build fails if cash, labor, and materials are not tracked rigorously. |
Budget model, payroll/stipend model, build cost accounting, cash runway, pricing of outputs, transparent reporting
|
| 4 |
Food Systems |
Primary |
A residential cohort must reliably feed itself to maintain morale, health, and work capacity. |
Kitchen operations, sourcing, meal roles, food cost per person, level of self-production vs purchase, sanitation practices
|
| 5 |
Shelter Systems |
Primary |
Housing is immediate lived reality; bad shelter degrades the entire experiment. |
Sleeping arrangements, privacy thresholds, expansion path, maintenance responsibility, build standards for habitable space
|
| 6 |
Manufacturing |
Primary |
OSE is fundamentally a productive civilization project; real output must happen from day one. |
What gets built first, toolchain readiness, workflow, quality control, documentation, relation between learning and production
|
| 7 |
Law & Justice |
Secondary |
Informal trust works at first, but conflict and fairness questions appear early. |
Group agreements, conflict resolution, grievance process, consequences, consent norms, property/use rules
|
| 8 |
Economic Coordination |
Secondary |
Work must be allocated rationally or overload and confusion emerge. |
Role assignment, labor balancing, project prioritization, volunteer integration, workflow visibility, bottleneck management
|
| 9 |
Research & Knowledge |
Secondary |
If lessons are not captured, the cohort does not compound learning. |
Documentation standards, design logs, test protocol, wiki process, version control, knowledge retrieval
|
| 10 |
Information & Media |
Secondary |
Recruitment, narrative, and external legitimacy depend on clear communication. |
Internal comms stack, public storytelling, recruitment messaging, publishing rhythm, signal vs noise management
|
| 11 |
Standards & Protocols |
Secondary |
Repeatability begins when the team stops improvising everything from scratch. |
Build standards, naming conventions, documentation format, training templates, QA checklists, handoff process
|
| 12 |
Culture & Values |
Secondary |
Shared mission is not enough; norms must be made explicit before drift sets in. |
Expected behavior, work ethic, openness norms, dignity/respect norms, ceremonies, how culture is taught to newcomers
|
| 13 |
Mental Health |
Secondary |
Intense communal work can generate burnout, conflict, and silent disengagement. |
Check-in process, peer support, boundaries, burnout detection, rest norms, support escalation path
|
| 14 |
Physical Health |
Secondary |
Injuries, exhaustion, and poor ergonomics can disable a small team quickly. |
First aid readiness, injury prevention, sleep norms, work-rest cycle, access to care, baseline health practices
|
| 15 |
Water Systems |
Secondary |
Water reliability is existential for any live-work site. |
Drinking water source, distribution, backup supply, hot water, sanitation, monitoring and maintenance responsibility
|
| 16 |
Energy Systems |
Secondary |
Power is required for tools, housing, communications, and site function. |
Minimum viable energy architecture, backup power, load priorities, cost model, resilience strategy, maintenance ownership
|
| 17 |
Transportation |
Secondary |
People and materials must move or site productivity stalls. |
Shared vehicle policy, logistics scheduling, procurement runs, fuel cost, maintenance, driver responsibility
|
| 18 |
Waste & Recycling |
Secondary |
Disorder, contamination, and inefficiency emerge rapidly without waste systems. |
Trash flow, scrap sorting, composting, salvage rules, hazardous waste handling, cleanliness standards
|
| 19 |
Infrastructure |
Latent |
Important, but at v1 only the minimum viable site layout is needed. |
When to formalize roads, utilities, drainage, permanent works, and how to phase infrastructure investments
|
| 20 |
Environment & Ecology |
Latent |
Stewardship matters, but the first cohort mainly needs not to damage the land while learning. |
Land-use principles, regeneration goals, water-land interaction, erosion prevention, future ecological monitoring
|
| 21 |
Security (Internal) |
Latent |
At small scale, trust and norms usually substitute for formal policing. |
Safety boundaries, incident response, visitor policy, tool security, nighttime procedures, when formal security becomes necessary
|
| 22 |
Defense (External) |
Latent |
Not a practical operational system at v1, though strategic awareness matters. |
Threat awareness, legal posture, resilience mindset, communications strategy, what external risk actually matters
|
| 23 |
Healing & Recovery |
Latent |
Important long term, but distinct healing systems are usually premature at bootstrap scale. |
How recovery differs from ordinary rest, how to handle burnout/trauma, future care pathways, reintegration practices
|
| 24 |
Recreation & Social Life |
Latent |
Community life matters, but can begin informally before becoming a designed institution. |
What forms of celebration, fun, and bonding actually sustain the team, cadence of gatherings, inclusion norms
|