The Governance Layer

Most software treats governance as an afterthought: decisions live in meeting notes, role history lives in someone's memory, and the reasons behind a change evaporate the moment the meeting ends. Your organization's memory system inverts this. Governance is first-class: a set of typed, interlinked databases that carry role memory, decision lineage, and early warning signals across the full set of 29 databases. Everything below is created by Sera only as draft, candidate, or pending records for human review; the worker never approves, applies, or publishes anything.

Circles

The Circles database holds each governance circle. Every circle carries a Circle Lead and a Rep Steward as relations to people, plus a parent/sub-circle hierarchy so the organization's structure is navigable rather than folkloric. When you want to know who leads a domain or which sub-circles roll up to a general circle, the answer is a record, not a recollection.

Roles and Role Assignments

Roles are the role cards: the purpose, domain, and accountabilities of each named role. Role Assignments connect a person to a role. Each assignment carries an Energization level — Energized, Willing, or Unwilling — so the organization can see not just who holds a role but how alive that holding is.

Crucially, on a handoff Sera captures both the outgoing and the incoming assignment. The person leaving the role and the person taking it are both recorded, preserving the why of the transition rather than silently overwriting history. Role memory survives the handoff.

Decision Candidates

Every significant decision becomes a Decision Candidate. Each carries an Implementation Status (default Not Started), a Purpose Alignment score, and relations to Related Tasks and Related Risks. This is decision lineage: you can trace a decision to the work it generated and the risks it created or mitigated.

Policies

The Policies database holds active policies. These are read at extraction time so Sera can flag conflicts — a new proposal that contradicts an existing policy surfaces as a signal rather than slipping through. Policies are typically promoted from approved Decision Candidates: a decision that hardens into a standing rule becomes a policy.

Canon Change Requests

Proposed changes to the organization's foundational agreements — its canon — land in Canon Change Requests, which are always Pending Review. Canon is never changed automatically. A human must consent.

CCOS Ledger Entries

Every governance action is recorded as a CCOS Ledger Entry, always in Draft. Together these form an immutable governance-process audit trail: role changes, policy changes, tension resolutions, and canon amendments all leave a trace. The ledger is how the organization proves to itself, later, why it did what it did. On the dashboard this queue is labeled the Transparency Ledger.

Commitments and Tensions

Commitments track ongoing inter-party agreements. Tensions name governance and operational gaps — the felt sense that something is not right yet. Surfacing a tension is the entry point to the whole governance process, so tensions are treated as valuable signal, not complaint.

Unresolved Contradictions

Every night Sera compares records against each other and files what genuinely conflicts into Unresolved Contradictions, always with Status Open. Two documents naming different owners, a decision that contradicts an earlier approved decision, a deadline that moved while its dependent tasks did not: these are surfaced with their sources, the people involved, and the smallest decision that would reconcile them. Sera has no ability to resolve one herself, by construction. See the article on the overnight watch for how to work the list.

Vital Signs

Vital Signs hold the small number of metrics a circle or role has chosen to watch: the current value, how it is measured, its cadence, and a health reading. A vital sign without a Target is a standing health metric; with a Target it becomes a key result. Health is calculated by arithmetic nightly, never judged by a model. The dedicated Vital Signs article covers how to set them up well.

---

Collapse-signal monitoring

The governance layer also watches for the patterns that historically destroy organizations. When Sera detects a signal, it creates a Risk tagged with the matching Collapse Pattern Type, drawn from a canonical set of seven. The numbers are canonical and stable, so always name a pattern by its number, for example "Pattern 4: Financial Fragility". Everyone then means the same thing without re-explaining it:

1. Interpersonal Conflict & Human Complexity
2. No Shared Vision No Shared Future
3. Poor Governance & Power Shadows
4. Financial Fragility
5. Burnout & Loss of Commitment
6. The Wrong People Problem
7. The Scale Trap

Each risk gets an auto-calculated Review Date based on severity: High severity = +30 days, Medium = +90 days. The review date turns a flagged risk into a standing appointment with reality, so a serious signal cannot be filed and forgotten. This is early warning built into the data model itself.

Key points

Sera makes governance first-class through typed, interlinked databases across 29 total: Circles (Circle Lead and Rep Steward relations, parent and sub hierarchy); Roles and Role Assignments (Energization: Energized, Willing, or Unwilling, with both outgoing and incoming assignments captured on handoff to preserve the why); Decision Candidates (Implementation Status, Purpose Alignment, Related Tasks and Risks); Policies (read at extraction time for conflict detection, promoted from approved Decision Candidates); Canon Change Requests (always Pending Review); CCOS Ledger Entries (always Draft, an immutable governance audit trail, shown on the dashboard as the Transparency Ledger); Unresolved Contradictions (filed Open by the nightly sweep, never auto-resolved); Vital Signs (circle and role metrics); plus Commitments and Tensions. Risks carry the seven numbered Collapse Pattern Types with auto-calculated Review Dates (High = +30 days, Medium = +90 days) as early warning; always refer to a pattern by its number, for example Pattern 4: Financial Fragility. Sera only ever creates draft, candidate, or pending records for human review.