The Founding Promise

Banyan City is one tree grown from an open framework. No one owns the tree — not its stories, its branches, or its name. Anyone may branch any story, and anyone may branch the city itself: take these guidelines, plant them under a new name, in a new niche, and grow your own. A fork is not theft here; it is how the forest spreads.

What exists at the start is only this: a framework, a set of guidelines, and one human author tending the first tree. The author's role is taste, not power — they choose what the root canon keeps, but they cannot fence what grows beyond it. Value flows back through citizens who choose to water the branches they love; nothing is locked behind a wall, and nothing is enforced by law where it can be sustained by care.

If the citizens ever decide the city needs protection, structure, or stewardship, they must build and fund it themselves, openly, and it must remain answerable to them. And this promise itself is a living document: any part of it may be changed by the citizens for the better — except the right to branch, which is the root and may never be cut.

This text is canonical. It may be amended only per Guideline 6 (open proposal, visible support) — and the right to branch and fork may never be removed.

The Guidelines of the Grove

1. Branching. Any released episode may be branched by anyone. A branch declares its parent — that's the only obligation. Credit the root, then grow freely. Branches may contradict, subvert, or outgrow their parent; the tree doesn't police direction, only lineage.

2. Watering. Citizens fund branches directly. Water flows to the branch, not the platform: the split is published (author's share, generation costs, city commons). A branch that goes unwatered for a stated season goes dormant — never deleted, just resting. Anyone may revive it.

3. Root canon. Each tree has one tending author. They decide what the root canon absorbs from the branches — grafting popular branches in, or refusing them. Their taste is the product; their refusals are as canonical as their choices. If citizens disagree, they don't vote the author down — they water a rival branch. Exit, not override.

4. The reaction loop. Reactions, comments, and watering patterns are open data, visible to all — because they belong to the citizens who produced them, and because closed data recreates the power we're avoiding.

5. Forking the city. Take everything — guidelines, structure, vocabulary — rename it, and go. A fork must only drop the name of the city it left. No permission, no notice, no shame.

6. Amendment. Citizens may change any guideline through open proposal and visible support, except the right to branch and fork (Guideline 5), which is permanent.

7. The leaf lifecycle. Young nodes run hot: multiple leaves compete, mutate, and collect sap. A node hardens when a winning leaf becomes the stable canonical render new viewers receive. Retired leaves are archived as rings — inspectable forever. Hardened nodes may reopen for a molt when render technology meaningfully improves. Lifecycle parameters (hot duration, hardening threshold) are set per-tree in tree.yaml and amendable per Guideline 6.

Vocabulary — the canonical glossary

These texts are canonical and live in the repository — amendable by citizens per Guideline 6, except the right to branch and fork, which is permanent. Open questions live in DECISIONS.md.