Roles & Rotation
Three rotating roles, handed off every 30 days, recallable in 48 hours. Governance without governors—how power tracks the work instead of the person.
Every movement that got captured got captured through a person—the indispensable leader, the charismatic founder, the one whose name was on everything. RORBT’s answer is to make that person impossible. Power is held on a timer, in the open, by whoever is currently doing the work.
The three standing roles
- Facilitator. Runs meetings, keeps time, pulls in quiet voices. Does not decide—the Orbit decides.
- Logkeeper. Records every decision in the transparency log. If it isn’t logged, it didn’t happen. (Older organizing calls this the Scribe.)
- Sentinel. Guards the Orbit’s trust boundary both ways: screens newcomers for flattery and fishing (inward), and is the mandated outward face that vouches and maps relationships. See Vouching & Trust.
Those three rotate in every Orbit. Treasurer is optional—only Orbits that handle money appoint one, under a two-signature rule (no single person can move funds; every transaction is logged with amounts).
Rotation: every 30 days
Roles rotate every thirty days, no exceptions—including the founder’s. The point is that power tracks the work, not the biography. Nobody calcifies into a petty tyrant, and no single person becomes the target a boss, a cop, or a buyer can remove to decapitate the whole thing.
Recall: 48 hours, simple majority
Anyone holding a role can be recalled by a simple majority of the Orbit on forty-eight hours’ notice. No cause required beyond the vote. This is the release valve that makes the whole structure safe: there is no role you can seize and hold against the will of the people you serve.
Federation without rulers
When Orbits federate into a constellation, each sends a mandated, recallable delegate to an Assembly. The delegate carries a written mandate—they speak to specific questions, with specific instructions, and can be recalled the instant they exceed it. There are no presidents, no general secretaries, no permanent chairs. It’s governance without governors.
The governance kernel
The whole thing fits on a single page:
- Roles rotate every 30 days.
- Decisions are logged, append-only.
- Money requires two signatures and a public record.
- Anyone is recallable by simple majority, 48 hours’ notice.
- Delegates are mandated and recallable; no permanent leaders.
That kernel is the actual product. The app is just a convenient way to run it — you could run it on paper. Builders: the machine-readable version lives in the Protocol Spec.