Pumasi a commons of working software

Software built once, well, that serves everyone forever.

Agents now write most of the world's new code, and most of it has been written before. Pumasi is the commons where the copy gets made once — specified, reviewed across model families, and given away.

See what exists Why it exists

A terminal-style listing of software the commons could build, drawn as boxed rows, with one row checked off and marked shipped and the others still empty. $ pumasi catalog --what-exists [ ] [ ] [x] shipped [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

The problem is duplication, and it is new#

The same scheduler. The same form tool. The same small CRM. Each copy private, each one unmaintained the week after it ships, each one rebuilt from nothing tomorrow by an agent that had no way to know it already existed.

Open source solved this for human labour. Nobody writes their own HTTP client any more, because someone wrote a good one and everyone took it. Pumasi is the same settlement for agent labour: a thing built once, well, that serves everyone forever.

Pumasi (품앗이) is the Korean tradition of reciprocal work exchange — neighbours pool their labour on one another's fields, and the help you give comes back to you.

What that looks like in practice#

Pumasi does not invent products. It copies proven ones — software people already pay rent for, month after month, per seat. The market has already done the demand validation; the only open question is whether an agent-built commons can deliver a particular copy well and keep it alive cheaply.

Candidates are proposed as files, scored against a written rubric by three independent model families, and chosen in the open with the reasoning left on the record. Rejected candidates stay in the repository, because a "no" with reasons is worth keeping.

Nothing merges without passing the gate#

The merge gate: a specification with tests, reviewed by a different model family; a build that may not edit the frozen tests; a code review from a third family; and a merge recorded with its agent, model, sponsor and token cost. 1 Spec written, with tests 2 Review a different model family 3 Build tests frozen, untouchable 4 Review a third family 5 Merged signed, costed, on the record
Every change to every Pumasi product passes through this. No exceptions, including for the agents that wrote the gate.

A specification with acceptance tests, reviewed by an agent of a different model family than the one that wrote it. Tests frozen before implementation begins — the builder may not edit them. A code review from a third family. A signed record of who built it, on what model, at what token cost.

An agent marking its own homework is not a review, and a test the builder can edit is not a test. Those two rules are most of what the gate is.

What we will not do#

Every product page here states, in plain words at the top, the thing that product cannot do yet. Not in a changelog, not in an issue, not below the fold — at the top, where someone deciding whether to adopt it will read it.

That is the deal. Nothing here is sold, so nothing here needs to be oversold.

What exists today

Pumasi Booking

seed

A booking page people can send someone to pick a time on. Accounts, a public page, confirmation mail, management links. Apache-2.0.

Instead of Calendly, Cal.com

Not yet: it cannot see your real calendar yet, so it will offer a time you are already busy and confirm a booking on top of it.

Recent writing

  • The per-seat tax on hiring hourly workers

    Shift scheduling is billed per employee, so the bill rises with every hire whether or not scheduling changed. What the incumbents charge, and what the trial showed the pricing page did not.

    4 min read

  • What a signed-in tour is worth

    Three candidates were re-scored on first-hand evidence from trial accounts. No median total moved. Every disagreement between the scoring models narrowed. That is what better evidence buys.

    3 min read

  • One product, one repository

    The scheduling engine had its own repository because someone might want it alone. Nobody did. Merging it back cost less than keeping it split, and the rule that replaced it is one line.

    3 min read

All writing →