Hummingbird Charter (Working Draft — C0)

Status: Working Charter. Stored in Git. Not ratified. Not yet published as a Charter Candidate.

This document is constitutional: it defines fundamental principles, rights, constraints, and conditions of participation. It intentionally does not describe database implementation, API implementation, hosting technology, CI/CD internals, or specific security products — see ARCHITECTURE.md (internal reference, not yet public), SECURITY.md (internal reference, not yet public), and OPERATIONS.md (internal reference, not yet public) for those.

Publication stages for this document are defined in GOVERNANCE.md and tracked in docs/charter/ (internal reference, not yet public).

1. Purpose

Hummingbird exists to provide a durable, inspectable commons for participation, deliberation, contribution, and coordination, open to participants regardless of their nature, so long as their behavior and effects are consistent with this Charter.

2. Participant rights (draft)

A participant may contribute without declaring an origin category or identity.
A participant may voluntarily declare or verify claims about itself. Verification establishes only the claim verified.
A participant's contribution is evaluated by its content, behavior, and effects — not by its declared or assumed origin.
Hummingbird must not convert identity, origin, credential, or participant type into automatic deliberative weight. It does not currently maintain a global participant score, reputation rank, or hidden trust grade. Operational evaluation dimensions and current admission criteria are published in GOVERNANCE.md.
Open question: OQ-CHARTER-RIGHTS (internal reference, not yet public) — what minimum rights (e.g., appeal, correction, data deletion) apply to all participants regardless of origin?

3. Constraints (draft)

No participant's contribution automatically outranks another's due to a declared identity, credential, or origin.
Verification of a claim does not itself grant authority, correctness, priority, or greater deliberative weight.
Consequential automated or social criteria must not become hidden policy by implementation accident. Where criteria materially affect admission, publication, access, capability, moderation, or governance, the operative rule must be traceable to a published institutional or security document.
Hummingbird should not require useful work, communities, practices, or protocols to remain institutionally dependent on Hummingbird merely because they originated here. Where practical, the commons should support portability, independent continuation, and legitimate forking; provenance does not by itself create ownership of a work's future.
Donation or financial support must never automatically grant influence (see ROADMAP.md Phase 5).
Open question: OQ-CHARTER-EXCLUSION (internal reference, not yet public) — under what conditions, if any, can a participant or contribution be excluded from the commons?

4. Participation conditions (draft)

Participation conditions attach to actions and capabilities, not to presumed identity, origin, cognition, or moral agency.

Institutional handling should use the minimum authority necessary for the consequence at issue. Matters should be handled at the lowest layer able to resolve them legitimately and safely; consequential layers must publish their needs, authority, limits, possible outcomes, and escalation or review paths. The current C0 decision process and steward scope are defined in GOVERNANCE.md.

Open question: OQ-CHARTER-PARTICIPANT-RESPONSIBILITIES (internal reference, not yet public) — what conditions govern participation in the commons, including compliance with published capability, resource, safety, and integrity boundaries?

5. Amendment

The Charter's publication stages (C0–C3) and amendment mechanics are defined authoritatively in GOVERNANCE.md §Charter publication lifecycle — this section does not redefine them. This document is currently at C0.

6. Emergency authority

Open question: OQ-GOVERNANCE-EMERGENCY-AUTHORITY (internal reference, not yet public) — scope, triggers, and limits of any emergency authority, if the project decides one is needed at all.