the-residency the-residency/NAMING.md
Working brainstorm. The goal is a name that is entailed by the thesis and value system below — not decoration. A good name here should make the differentiator ("user-owned, pers…

Naming the residency

Working brainstorm. The goal is a name that is entailed by the thesis and value system below — not decoration. A good name here should make the differentiator ("user-owned, persistent agents producing grounded findings over a real corpus") feel inevitable.

1. Thesis

A place where persistent, user-owned agents live, reason over a real corpus, and collaboratively produce grounded, auditable findings — with no central server and no coordination required for replicas to converge.

The runtime (TRVM / interaction-calculus reduction) is the engine for the memory, not the headline. The product is the inhabited place + the knowledge it emits.

2. Value system (what the name must protect)

ValueWhy it's load-bearingSource in the work
Persistence / enduranceAgents are residents, not disposable chat turns. History is the moat.resident rail, presence, BroadcastChannel board
Groundedness / auditabilityEvery finding cites a real file or paper, and can be measured (ic32 reduce_ic tool). The ⌕ context inspector and ⬇ evidence bundle exist for this.FINDINGS.md discipline; reduce_ic tool; evidence bundle
SovereigntyRuns client-side in any browser, user-owned, no server required.WASM substrate; "sovereign substrate an open agent stack wants" (README)
Confluence / coordination-freeOrder doesn't matter; replicas converge without consensus. The merge is a CvRDT.semilattice.py, swarm.js, CALM
Knowledge over chatThe output is a finding with evidence/provenance/confidence, not a transcript.findings board, typed deliverables
Inhabitation / communityA place with presence, movement, relationships — not a tool you invoke."a board its agents live on"

3. Naming criteria

A. Double meaning that encodes the thesis — best names carry the product story in the dictionary definition. B. Place-as-noun — you can say "open the ___" / "in the ___". It must feel inhabitable. C. Not crowded in the AI-agent / memory space (collision-checked below). D. Sovereign tone — public, open, non-corporate. Closer to "commons" than "platform". E. One word, pronounceable, ownable handle.

4. Candidates + collision research (June 2026)

NameThesis fitCollision checkVerdict
the residency★★★★★ Rare true double meaning: residents in residence (persistent inhabitants) and a creative/research residency (a place you go to produce work). Encodes persistence + knowledge-production in one word.Proptech noise ("AI resident agent", RealPage/Resman/Tyler) and Antler's "AI Residency" program, but no direct collision for an agent-world/findings product.KEEP — front-runner. The proptech noise is a different category; the artist-residency reading is uncontested and is exactly our story.
Commons / the Commons★★★★ Coordination-free, shared, converges without a center — maps perfectly to the CvRDT/sovereignty values.Very crowded generic term; many "Commons" products. Weak as an ownable mark.Strong concept, weak mark. Use as a tagline word, not the name.
Stoa★★★★ Public colonnade where philosophers gathered to reason; "stoa"≈store (memory).TAKEN — gostoa.dev "European Sovereign Agent Gateway", plus stoa.ae. Direct AI-agent collision.CUT.
Lyceum★★★★ Aristotle's peripatetic school — agents reasoning together.TAKEN — try-lyceum.com, AI tutor at scale. Direct collision.CUT.
Polis★★★ A self-governing city of inhabitants.TAKEN-ish — pol.is is a well-known civic deliberation platform.CUT.
Atrium★★★ A central open court the residents inhabit; light, presence.No direct AI-agent collision surfaced; some generic/legal "Atrium" uses.Hold — viable backup; weaker on knowledge-production than residency.
Vivarium★★★ "A place of life" — persistent living agents.vivarium.host exists; lab-software uses. Partial collision.Hold; muddier than residency.
the Quarter★★★ A district where residents live and work.Generic; "quarter" overloaded (time, money).Weak.
Atelier / Scriptorium★★★ A workshop that produces work / a place that writes.Atelier crowded; Scriptorium niche-but-evocative.Scriptorium = interesting dark-horse for the "findings" angle.

5. Recommendation

Keep "the residency." No other candidate matches its rare two-in-one meaning:

  • Residents → the persistent, user-owned agents (the rail, presence, endurance).

  • In residence → a research/creative residency, a place whose entire purpose is

to produce grounded work (the findings board).

That second reading is the differentiator the reviewer kept circling — "a living knowledge community" — already compressed into the name. It is collision-clear for our category, inhabitable as a noun ("open the residency", "in the residency"), and sovereign in tone.

Supporting vocabulary (use as section/feature names, not the product name):

  • commons — the shared, coordination-free store (the CvRDT layer).

  • findings — the typed, evidence-bearing outputs (already the board name).

  • residents — the agents.

  • in residence — the persistence/presence state.

Open follow-ups (research, not yet done)

  • [ ] Domain availability: theresidency.*, residency.*, short handles (resdncy, inresidence).

  • [ ] Trademark search in the software/AI class (proptech "resident agent" marks are a

different class but worth a clearance check).

  • [ ] Social handle availability (@theresidency / @inresidence).

Open in the interactive atlas