Soma
v1 · in progress

Communities

Abantu is where a community decides together, its members, its rules and its work, without a central owner.
Draft. This page is a preview of the new guide. Its illustrations are drafts still in review.

Each community decides for itself. No one oversees the others.

A community in Paramira is a group of people who agree on how they work together: who belongs, what they decide, and how. Abantu is the app where that happens. There is no central owner: the community's history is a record its members share, signed by each of them, and its own key lets it sign for itself.

Communities come in four kinds. A family community is made from a family tree in iwacu. A clan brings families together. A general community is anything else: neighbours, a cooperative, an association. A contribution community is open to people who want to contribute to a public record without belonging to a community of their own.

Four panels: three generations of a family under a tree hung with photos; family houses linked by paths to a shared gathering place; neighbours tending a community garden; people arriving through an open gate to drop sealed letters into a box, watched by two stewards.
  • Family
  • Clan
  • General
  • Contribution

The four kinds of community run on the same tools, with rules that suit each.

Start a community

Six scenes: creating a community on a phone; showing an invitation phone to phone; choosing a profile card; receiving a sealed key; welcoming new members; a group looking at the community on a laptop.
  1. Create a community
  2. Invite in person
  3. Join as you choose
  4. Keep the community key
  5. Welcome members
  6. Open the community

From creating a community to its first members.

  1. Create a community. In abantu, choose New community and give it a name and a description. Tick An open contribution community only if it's meant for public contributions; otherwise it's a general community.
  2. Invite in person. Share the community's invitation link privately: show it on your phone, or send it in a private message. The link carries what's needed to join, so anyone who has it can ask to join. Don't post it publicly.
  3. Join as you choose. The person opening the link chooses which of their identities joins, and can make a new persona just for this community. That choice is fixed for this membership. One person can be a member only once, even with several identities on the same device.
  4. Keep the community key. Creating the community gives it a key of its own. It's sealed to you as its first custodian. Custodians can sign for the community; the members still decide.
  5. Welcome members. New members appear under Members once they've joined. In a contribution community, each device does a short calculation before joining, which makes mass sign-ups costly, and only custodians see the member list.
  6. Open the community. Its home has Proposals, Roles, Protocols, Projects, Members and Messages, plus the community apps it has turned on. In a contribution community, members who aren't custodians see its apps and messages only.

The current guide

Paramira as it is now. This guide is being written; until a section is here, the summer 2026 guide (v0) covers it.

Decide together

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