# The Oort ecosystem — what this is, what it does, what it means

Two products, one matter in two states.

**Oort** (oortstack.com) is the reservoir — the free library at the edge of the
system where every prompt rests: stored, attributed, honestly at zero until
someone runs it. **Flows** (flows.oortstack.com) is the same matter set in
motion — a prompt becomes a route with waypoints, verify gates, and a
destination. Run events arc back to the library the way comet trajectories
point home, and the revenue ledger pays the sources they came from.

The name is the method. Jan Oort never saw the cloud he's named for; he
inferred it from the trails of comets. This ecosystem makes the same move:
it refuses to rank anything by its claims and ranks only by observed
trajectories. A library that admits it is dark until something flies.

Read as architecture, this is an epistemology implemented as infrastructure —
a system engineered to refuse to know anything it hasn't observed. Every layer
distrusts a specific party until evidence arrives: imports distrust their own
re-runs, verify gates distrust the model, the beacon relay distrusts itself
with user data, the ledger distrusts the house, and production refuses its own
dev fallbacks.

## The constitution (values the code already enforces)

1. **Truth has one home.** Oort's database is the single source of truth;
   the Flows site is a generated artifact with a lossless round-trip and a
   CI parity check (`import-flows.mjs` ⇄ `sync-from-oort.mjs --verify`).
   Never hand-edit a copy.

2. **Never fake a number.** Imported content carries zero usage on arrival
   (`seed-real.mjs`: "HONEST defaults"). Trending demotes itself to "Recently
   added" rather than rank on zeros. Empty states say *honest zero* out loud.
   Zero is the receipt that makes every non-zero believable.

3. **Every claim carries its source.** `source_url`, `source_repo`,
   `license`, `source_hash` on every mirrored row. The research vault pairs
   each source with a reliability note. Provenance runs research → flow →
   run event → ledger.

4. **The user is the verifier.** Verify Gates are self-attestation, not
   AI self-grading: the complete button stays locked until a human ticks
   every check. Recovery prompts assume the AI sometimes fakes it, because
   it does.

5. **No dead ends.** Every task in the 188-node map either has a flow or
   generates one on demand. Gaps are admitted and answered, never hidden.

6. **The user's keys are the user's.** BYOK keys are AES-256-GCM encrypted,
   never pooled, never marked up, compared in constant time. A user with
   their own key generates free, because it costs the platform nothing.

7. **Charge for motion, never for knowledge.** The library is free forever;
   subscriptions live on the workspace. We monetize generation, publishing,
   and guided passage — never access, never inference.

8. **Ship nothing that only looks done.** The flows exist to catch
   looks-done-but-fake builds; the same rule binds the business (payout
   copy is hard-gated on the ledger actually existing) and the code
   (reduced-motion guards, timing-safe comparisons, honest empty states).

## The economics in one breath

A free commons ranked by receipts feeds a paid workspace that charges for
verification and generation. Creators earn from the completed runs of what
they publish (largest-remainder allocation over `flow_run_events`), the
platform never touches the user's provider relationship, and nothing is
paywalled that was ever free.

## The grammar

Dots joined by lines, two grammars: Oort draws an **undirected constellation**
(matter at rest, warm orange, the shelf); Flows draws a **directed route**
(matter in motion, comet-tail cyan, start-dot → verify-ring → destination).
Rest-verbs on Oort ("Opening the library"), motion-verbs on Flows ("Charting
your route"). Orange means library. Cyan means workspace. Everywhere.