What the organization actually did gets assembled as it happens, by the people who did it — instead of reconstructed from memory in the three weeks before a report is due. And the most specific evidence becomes usable without exposing the person it happened to.
You start from this: a person’s node assembling that person’s own contribution, and releasing pieces of it under a permission they can withdraw. Combining across many people’s nodes — and putting a floor under every published count — is what we build for your organization. That is what turns one person’s record into a programme-level number.
A report is due. The programme did good work all year. Nobody wrote it down in a form the report can use.
So someone spends three weeks interviewing staff and digging through email. What lands in the report is what was memorable, not what was representative.
And the strongest evidence — the specific thing that happened to a specific person — is the thing nobody can use, because it belongs to them.
The best evidence you have is the evidence you are least able to use.
The same six components, wired for a different job. Counts assemble from what people already said. A story moves only when somebody releases it, for one purpose, and they can take it back. The amber one is what we build for you.
Drag sideways to read the whole diagram →
Releasing something becomes a specific, revocable act for one purpose — not a permanent disclosure to whoever reads the newsletter next year.
What goes in stops being whatever three people happened to recall in a meeting, and starts being what actually recurred.
Staff currently pay for the report twice: once doing the work, once reconstructing it. This is the second payment.
“Group ran again — ninth week straight, eleven people. One of them said she hadn’t left the house in six weeks before she started coming. I asked if I could use that and she said yes, for the funder report only. Oh and the heating at number forty finally got fixed, took four calls.”
↳ voice notes reach the node as a registered source —
voxterm_transcripts, schema voxterm.transcript.v1
Every line traces to a source you can open. None of them names a person.
Your words are in the Q3 funder report. Used once.
“I hadn’t left the house in six weeks.” — released 14 September, funder report only.
This receipt is the pattern. A release you cannot see and cannot withdraw is not a release, it is a disclosure with better manners.
This is the pattern where the six layers come apart most sharply. The person the evidence is about gets the least direct benefit, and the person who signs the cheque gets the most — which is exactly why the release has to be real.
| Beneficiarythe person it happened to | |
|---|---|
| Userwhat they actually do | |
| Operatorstaff, programme leads | |
| Buyersigns the cheque | |
| Championspends the capital | |
| Economicwhat actually moves |
What the organization did stops being lost, and starts being provable — at the level of detail that actually persuades.
Two roads. Counts assemble automatically because they name nobody. Stories move only on a release that is specific, visible and revocable. Neither road requires anyone to write a report.
We will not print a return on investment here. Every figure in it would be invented, and the first person to check would be right. So the worksheet does the half we can do, and the pilot does the half we can’t.
Staff first. Unlike most of this catalog, this pattern is useful with staff nodes alone — the people doing the work are the people holding the evidence. It gets better as members join, and it does not wait for them.
Three shapes: a small dedicated machine each; one shared machine holding separate spaces; or hosted, at roughly $20 per person per month. Lane B in the diagram means you can start with two or three staff nodes reading a system you already run.
Nothing new, if they already talk to their node. Releasing a story is one deliberate confirmation, and it is the only step anyone is asked to take.
Nothing required. In practice this pattern is stronger with the app you already keep records in — Notion, a case system, a shared sheet — because that is where the year already is.
The left column is what a person has on day one. The right column is the ninety days — and the count that spans a whole programme, the thing a funder most wants to see, is the centre of it.
Each deployment names the buyer, the champion, the economic lever and the ninety days.
