commons-governancelisted

# Commons Governance — sharing a resource without a boss A shared vault, a collaboration space, a company-synced infra repo, a single git repo written by a fleet of agents — these are all **commons**: resources many actors draw on and modify. The naive failure is "tragedy of the commons" (everyone optimizes locally, the shared thing degrades — merge collisions, clobbered files, drift). The naive fix is top-down control (one owner gates everything → bottleneck, "move information to authority"). Elinor Ostrom's Nobel-winning work showed a third way: **self-governed commons that work, via specific design principles.** This skill applies them to AIOS shared substrate. The eight principles, applied, with sources: [`references/ostrom-design-principles.md`](references/ostrom-design-principles.md). ## The eight principles, applied to AIOS shared substrate 1. **Clear boundaries** — define exactly what's shared and who the participants are. (Which folders/repos are the commons? Who has access? `custom/` and personal vault are explicitly *not* the commons.) 2. **Rules fit local conditions** — match the rules to *this* group's actual usage, don't import generic policy. (A two-person space and a ten-person company need different rules.) 3. **Collective-choice arrangements** — those affected by the rules can change the rules. (Authority moves to the information — the people doing the work shape how the space works.) 4. **Monitoring** — the state of the commons is visible to participant