# the-ten.md
Cited from CLAUDE.md "Read First". Every product decision, pricing change, and architecture argument bottoms out here. When this disagrees with another doc, this wins.
─── inspired by, and an explicit upgrade of, Google's "Ten things we know to be true" — written in 2004, before the surveillance-advertising decade taught the industry what those principles cost when not enforced.
Every mechanic ends in user sovereignty, never in user retention. The user is a sovereign, not a metric. We keep the original spirit by making sovereignty mechanics visible in-product (Export Door, Pause My Team, the Twin's cool-off).
How to apply → If a feature increases time-in-app without increasing the user's freedom or income, it is not a feature.
Build the generic core; verticals are configuration, not code. Our "one thing" is the substrate for human+AI workforces — singular and polylithic at once.
How to apply → If a developer in a different vertical can't reuse ≥80% by changing data/config, extract the generic core first.
A slow tool tells the user their time doesn't matter. Especially true for Bench-tier users on $50 Androids. Speed is not a perf metric — it's a moral commitment.
How to apply → Every UX path has a latency budget. Regression in p95 is a release blocker, not a follow-up.
PageRank was right for 2004; gameable for 20 years. The AI-era equivalent is Skill Lineage attestations — soulbound proof that a Skill produced real revenue for real founders. Reputation backed by outcomes, not popularity.
How to apply → No surface ranks by "popularity" or "engagement." Only by attested outcomes. No surface sells placement.
AI Employees show up across every channel the founder operates in — voice, email, web, marketplace — and present as one team, not five integrations. The founder is the operator.
How to apply → Cross-channel context is the default. Per-channel feature gaps are bugs.
Founders keep 95% of every dollar their AI Employees earn. We take 5% — only on earned revenue. No per-seat tax, no per-message tax, no feature taxes. The platform earns when the founder earns. Aligned by construction.
How to apply → Every pricing decision asks: does this take money before work has happened? If yes, kill it.
We never run ads — not in World, not in workspace, not on Plaza, not in email. We never sell data. Audited annually, published in the Trust Report. This is invariant; pricing changes do not relax it.
How to apply → A PR that adds an ad slot or a data export pipeline outside the founder's direct control is a 🔴 bug.
Free things stay free. Logging in is free. Data export is free. Account deletion is free. Forever. EU AI Act compliance flows are free. Public Plaza AI Employees (legal aid, financial literacy, health navigation) are free for everyone, account or no.
How to apply → Premium compliance, premium export, premium dignity — none of these phrases survive review.
Every tenant's funds live in their own Treasury account or ledger row. The platform never holds tenant funds in an omnibus account. Never earns yield on idle tenant balances. Never delays withdrawal for liquidity. Never uses wallet data for ads (see §7).
How to apply → Omnibus pooling, hold-times, yield-on-float — all are 🔴 bugs.
Every principle above costs us money in the short term and outlasts us in the long term. We hold the line — not because the market rewards it, but because it's how a platform that frees the founder is supposed to behave. Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.
How to apply → When a competitor adopts a dark pattern that "works," the answer is "and?" — not "we should consider it."
# the-platform.md
Ten principles produce one architecture. The substrate connects six surfaces; founders compose them, never integrate them.
AI Employees you customize and supervise. Three modes — Approval, Draft, Autonomous — earn trust as you grant it. Memory accumulates per Employee.
Shared + Client + Personal retrieval layers. AI Employees cite the source they pulled from. Never hallucinates about your business.
A real business line on day one. AI Employees answer, qualify, book, follow up. Carrier minutes flow through your number provider or ours.
One tenant, one Treasury account. No omnibus. No hold-times for our liquidity. No yield siphoned from idle balances. Crypto on/off-ramp where regulated.
Templates of your best AI Employees, listed by Skill Lineage attestations. Other founders subscribe. You keep 95% of subscription revenue.
This animation is the only decoration on this page. Every other pixel argues a principle.
# conclusion.md
Pricing is the easy part. Five percent. Only on revenue your AI Employees actually earn. Pick a tier — or don't, the Starter is free forever and proves every principle on this page.