RCOS Core v0.1 Is Live: A Practical Operating System for Community Living

The first public draft of the Regenerative Community Operating System, RCOS Core v0.1, is now live.

This is an early but complete foundation for something many people have been trying to build for decades: a shared, practical, and adaptable way to organize intentional communities so they can survive, evolve, and regenerate rather than burn out, fragment, or collapse.

RCOS is not a utopian blueprint. It does not tell communities what to believe, how to live spiritually, or which values to adopt. Instead, it focuses on structure. It asks a simpler question:

What minimum systems must be explicit so that a community can function fairly, adapt over time, and avoid known failure modes?

This article explains what RCOS is, why it exists, who it is for, how it works, what has been released in this first launch, and what comes next.

Why RCOS Exists

Many communities fail for reasons that are surprisingly similar.

Power becomes informal and unaccountable. Conflict is avoided until it explodes. A few people carry invisible workloads and burn out. Land or shared assets quietly become privatised. Decision making drifts into inner circles. Exit becomes emotionally or economically impossible.

Most of these failures are not caused by bad intentions. They are caused by missing structure.

RCOS exists to make the invisible visible.

Instead of relying on shared assumptions, good vibes, or constant negotiation, RCOS asks communities to explicitly define:

• What they exist for
• What they govern and what they do not
• How decisions are made
• How power is limited
• How resources flow
• How conflict is handled
• How change happens over time

When these things are explicit, communities gain something rare: the ability to disagree without breaking.

What Is RCOS?

RCOS stands for Regenerative Community Operating System.

It is a modular, open specification that describes how to structure the social, economic, and governance systems of small to medium sized intentional communities.

Think of it as an operating system, not an ideology.

Just like a technical operating system defines how processes run, interact, and recover from errors, RCOS defines how community processes work and how failures are handled before they become existential threats.

RCOS is written as a formal but human readable specification. It uses clear rules, defined layers, explicit artifacts, and testable conditions.

It is designed to be:

• Minimal at the core
• Explicit rather than implicit
• Modular rather than monolithic
• Human scale rather than abstract
• Failure aware rather than idealistic

What Is Included in RCOS Core v0.1

The first public draft of RCOS Core includes:

• A layered structure defining the essential systems of a community
• Clear invariants that must not be violated
• Explicit governance and decision logic
• Membership rules with real exit paths
• Economic and resource boundaries
• Conflict and accountability processes
• Operational coordination rules
• Change, versioning, and experimentation mechanisms
• A compliance model and test philosophy

Each layer builds on the one below it. Nothing in higher layers can override the foundations.

This structure allows communities to start small and simple, while remaining structurally sound as they grow.

Who RCOS Is For

RCOS is designed for people who are serious about building or sustaining community, especially:

• Intentional communities
• Eco villages
• Regenerative land projects
• Co housing groups
• Community land trusts
• Small collectives transitioning into shared living
• Founders who want to avoid founder capture
• Communities that have already experienced breakdown and want to rebuild on stronger foundations

RCOS is especially useful for communities that:

• Want shared ownership or commons
• Care about long term resilience
• Expect conflict and want to handle it well
• Do not want power to depend on charisma
• Want clear exit paths and consent based participation

RCOS is not designed for large corporations, short term projects, or communities that explicitly reject structure.

Why RCOS Works

RCOS works because it is built around constraints, not ideals.

It does not assume people will always communicate well. It does not assume equal capacity, equal time, or equal emotional energy. It does not assume consensus will always be possible.

Instead, RCOS assumes that:

• Power always exists and must be bounded
• Conflict always arises and must be handled
• Resources always concentrate unless constrained
• Informality always favors some people over others
• Change always happens and must be guided

By making these realities explicit, RCOS reduces the space where harm can hide.

Another reason RCOS works is that it separates the core from optional modules. Communities do not need to agree on everything to share a strong foundation.

Introducing Modules

Alongside the RCOS Core, the first two optional modules have been published:

• Minimal Permaculture Module
• Permaculture Module

Modules are optional extensions that add structure in specific domains without bloating the core.

The core defines how a community functions. Modules define what a community does in particular areas.

This separation allows diversity without chaos.

Minimal Permaculture Module

The Minimal Permaculture Module is designed for small or early stage communities.

It provides a lightweight ecological baseline without requiring expert knowledge, high labor input, or full system design.

It is ideal for communities that:

• Are under twenty people
• Have limited land
• Are still stabilizing governance
• Want ecological responsibility without overwhelm

The focus is on preventing ecological damage, clarifying stewardship responsibility, and avoiding invisible labor rather than maximizing yields.

Permaculture Module

The full Permaculture Module is for communities where land stewardship is central to the project.

It introduces structured ecological governance, stewardship roles, long term land protection, and integration with community economics.

It is suitable for eco villages, regenerative farms, land based communities, and long term commons.

Importantly, it does not dictate techniques or aesthetics. It defines interfaces between ecology, governance, and economy.

How to Apply Modules

Modules are not automatic.

To apply a module, a community must:

• Explicitly adopt it through governance
• Define its scope
• Create or adopt required artifacts
• Assign responsibility
• Document how it interacts with existing rules

Modules can be time bounded, experimental, or removed later if they no longer serve the community.

If a module is not explicitly adopted, it does not apply.

Stress Tests for Validation

Alongside the core and modules, RCOS now includes a growing set of stress tests.

These are not theoretical scenarios. They are based on real community failures observed again and again.

Examples include:

• Dominant speakers controlling decisions
• Invisible power accumulation through responsibility
• Founder veto power
• Informal inner circles
• Burnout through invisible care labor
• Privatization of commons
• Emergency rule bypass
• Conflict avoidance cultures

Each stress test defines expected RCOS behavior, pass criteria, and fail criteria.

The purpose is simple: a system that only works in ideal conditions is not a real system.

What Comes Next

RCOS Core v0.1 is a first public draft, not a finished product.

Next steps include:

• Refining language and clarity
• Improving examples and artifacts
• Expanding stress tests
• Publishing reference implementations
• Learning from real world application

This is where communities come in.

If you are applying RCOS, or parts of it, in a real community, we would love to hear from you. Reference implementations help turn theory into shared learning.

How You Can Get Involved

There are several ways to engage with RCOS:

• Read and review the core specification
• Share feedback or critique
• Apply parts of RCOS in your community
• Contribute modules or safeguards
• Help refine artifacts and templates
• Join as a member to actively contribute to the blueprint

RCOS is meant to evolve through use, not authority.

A Closing Note

RCOS does not promise harmony, perfection, or easy answers.

What it offers is something more modest and more powerful: a shared language and structure that makes community life survivable, adaptable, and regenerative.

If you have ever thought, there must be a better way to do this, RCOS is an invitation to explore that question together.