Groundwork Commons
A platform for neighborhood-scale social infrastructure
About the Project
Most digital communication platforms treat physical proximity as irrelevant. They optimize for reach, engagement metrics, and network effects that scale to millions. This creates a gap: there's no good infrastructure for the 5-50 people who actually share a street or small neighborhood to coordinate about practical matters—lost pets, shared resources, local decisions, mutual aid.
Groundwork Commons is a platform for hyperlocal communities built on .NET with SQLite. A single primary node serves the community with continuous replication to backup locations (cloud storage, peer nodes, or local filesystems). When the primary becomes unavailable, communities can quickly restore from a replica and resume operations. The system uses proven, simple technology designed for the 5-50 person scale. Data stays within the neighborhood network, with no corporate intermediary required.
Core Concepts
Simple, Resilient Infrastructure
A single primary node serves the community, with continuous replication to backup locations using Litestream. When the primary fails, another community member can restore from a replica and become the new primary. The simple architecture prioritizes reliability over complex distributed systems.
Democratic Governance
Built-in proposal and voting system enables democratic decision-making. Members vote on governance changes, role assignments, and moderation decisions. Vote outcomes are automatically enforced by the system, preventing admin override. Node operators are community members, accountable through democratic processes.
Community Ownership
Communities own their data and infrastructure. No corporate intermediaries, no centralized servers with access to your conversations. All data stays within the neighborhood network, controlled by community members.
Hyperlocal Scale
Built for the 5-50 people who share physical proximity—a street, small neighborhood, or apartment building. The technology choices reflect this scale, favoring simplicity over features designed for millions of users.
Key Features
Single-primary architecture
Democratic governance
Community ownership
Hyperlocal scale
Data sovereignty
.NET technology stack