Roadmap · public · living document
Where we're coming from, where we're going.
Where ness.city came from, where it is, and where it's going, and why. Public and living.
currently v0.70 · full history at /changelog
Where we started
Building on the Network State thesis.
The Network State thesis argues that a community can start online, around a shared purpose, and grow into something with real physical presence and, eventually, recognition. ness.city is built on that premise, but as the civic layer, not the campus: the coordination tools a community like that actually needs day to day, and none of the parts that tie a network to one place, one lease, or one person's decisions.
Where we are
A network just proved the thesis needs this.
In mid-2026, Network School's Malaysia campus was ordered to cease operations over a licensing issue. A new campus in Kazakhstan followed within a day, a real upgrade in several ways. But the recovery ran through one founder's own backup, not through anything the community owned. Members carried nothing of their own between the two: not a roster, not their event history, not their reputation.
That is exactly the gap ness.city exists to close, and it's why the last few weeks of work went where they went.
Why we build what we build
No single point of failure
A network built on one campus, one lease, or one operator's goodwill can be ended by a single decision it doesn't control. ness.city's data is exportable, its identity layer is portable, and no host organisation can revoke it.
Consent over completeness
A roster of thousands is a liability the moment it's public. The directory is gated behind real participation (rate a few members to browse), and only people who take a deliberate public action, like saying where they're heading next, ever show up outside the gate.
Interoperability, not another silo
Every startup society rebuilds identity, events, and coordination behind its own login. The Civic Protocol is an open, MIT-licensed contract so any node can publish its own numbers and any member can carry their identity somewhere else.
Real numbers over vibes
A KPI that isn't wired to real data gets labeled 'needs data,' not dressed up as a stat. This applies to nskpi.com's dashboard and to this page: nothing here is aspirational copy pretending to be a status update.
Recently shipped
full changelog →Member rating index
A ranked social index of the community, revealed progressively as you rate. Anonymous by default, no login required.
Roster privacy gate
The directory isn't public. Rate a few members and it opens. The gate is enforced server-side, not just hidden in the UI.
Where next
The continuity map. When a campus changes, this is how the community finds each other in the next place.
The Civic Protocol
An open, MIT-licensed contract for startup societies to interoperate. Reference implementation is this site.
nskpi.com
The registry: real vital signs polled live from every node that implements the protocol, not a static list of who exists.
Next in the pipeline
Events + food, natively
A community's day-to-day needs a home that isn't tied to any one campus's own site. Native, portable, works wherever the community physically is.
Portable identity (Civic Protocol v0.2)
One person, one ID across nodes, so leaving a node doesn't mean losing who you are on the network.
Portable reputation (v0.3)
Ratings and rings that travel with the person instead of living in one node's database.
AI topic-tagging + Nessie agent
Every problem auto-tagged on submit; an always-on agent that triages and drafts explanations.
Forkable civic OS
Any startup society clones ness.city to coordinate its own community, and shares numbers back through the protocol.
Open-source and bottom-up. Contribute on GitHub to help build any of these, or read the protocol spec to add your own node.