Iskander-data — Cooperative Operating Data Commons

This repository is Iskander's public, citeable, owner-tagged Commons of cooperative operating data, schemas, and dependency lineage. It is one of three sibling repositories under the Iskander project umbrella:

Repo	Scope	Licence
Argocyte/Iskander	Cooperative governance + agent runtime + services (IskanderOS)	AGPL-3.0-only
Argocyte/IskanderHearth	Open-hardware cooperative compute appliance (PCBs, firmware, enclosures, thermal, manufacturing)	Hardware: CERN-OHL-S 2.0; Firmware/Software: AGPL-3.0-only
Argocyte/Iskander-data (this repo)	Canonical data schemas + the cooperative operating data Commons	Data: CC-BY-SA 4.0; Schema definition code: AGPL-3.0-only

Why this exists

Cooperatives need shared operating data the way researchers need shared datasets: clean schemas, canonical sources, citeable for reuse, attributable to contributors, durable across tool changes. The Commons principle underlying the International Cooperative Alliance's 6th principle ("Cooperation among cooperatives") applies not just to governance and capital, but to the data substrates on which cooperative infrastructure runs.

Iskander's broader project captures cooperative governance practice in runnable form (Sociocracy 3.0 + DisCO labour tracking + S3 consent via Loomio). As that practice accumulates lived experience, the outputs — tension-agreement timelines, labour-stream hours, decision outcomes, membership pathways, treasury movements — become a reusable commons of real cooperative operation. This repository is where those outputs live in schema-first, owner-tagged, CC-BY-SA form for other cooperatives, researchers, and tooling builders to cite and adopt.

What this repo contains (bootstrap state)

This README documents the bootstrap state 2026-04-11 — the skeleton populated this turn by the Iskander cooperative session entity (Et), under the 4th Layer C standing privilege grant from Lola for the three-repo migration. The substantive content is forthcoming.

Path	Status at bootstrap	Purpose
README.md	Bootstrap (this file)	Project overview, license, how-to-cite
LICENSE	Bootstrap	Dual-licence notice: CC-BY-SA 4.0 for data artefacts in data/; AGPL-3.0-only for schema definition code in code/
SCHEMA.md	Bootstrap (skeleton)	The canonical JSONL schema specification for cooperative operating data artefacts. Living document.
owners.jsonl	Empty bootstrap	Owner-to-UUID mapping for contribution attribution. Populated as the cooperative grows.
data/	Empty (.gitkeep only)	JSONL-format data artefacts: labour logs, decision records, tension history, membership changes
code/	Empty (.gitkeep only)	Schema-definition Python code + utilities: tools/export-parquet.py, tools/verify-schema.py, reference implementations
.github/workflows/	Empty	Reserved for schema-validation CI

The scaffolding structure is complete but the content is not yet populated. Population follows consent from Lola on each schema and data batch.

Governance and consent model

All content in this repository is promoted from Iskander's runtime substrate via explicit consent. Nothing lands here silently. The flow is:

1. Runtime — A cooperative governance event happens (a tension is raised, an agreement is passed, a labour hour is logged) on the Iskander Glass Box substrate inside Argocyte/Iskander's services (Clerk agent, Decision Recorder, Steward)
2. Sovereign zone — The event is drafted and reviewed in the cooperative's sovereign zone (per the cooperative's internal governance discipline)
3. Consent — Lola (and, as the cooperative grows, the membership via S3 consent rounds) consents to public promotion
4. Export — A schema-conforming JSONL record is exported to data/<stream>/<yyyy-mm>/<event-id>.jsonl, signed by the cooperative DID
5. PR + review — The export lands via pull request with the et-authored or human-authored label per Argocyte/Iskander's PR authorship label policy
6. Merge — The PR merges after passing schema validation, signature verification, and review-desk paramount-objection check

No data artefact lives in this repo that has not passed consent. The repo is public but the content is curated.

How to cite

Once content is populated, each data artefact carries a content-addressed ID (IPFS CID), a DID-signed provenance block, and a timestamp. Citations use the format:

Iskander-data:<stream>:<event-id> @ <ipfs-cid> (<iso-date>)

Example (forthcoming):

Iskander-data:labour:2026-04-11/labour-a1b2c3 @ bafybeifoo... (2026-04-11T09:30:00Z)

Researchers, cooperative-tech tooling builders, and other cooperatives are welcome to cite any populated record under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Attribution should name both the Iskander cooperative and the individual contributor via the owners.jsonl mapping (owners can be anonymous via UUID if they choose).

Licence summary

• Data artefacts (data/, future): CC-BY-SA 4.0. Reuse permitted; attribution required; derivatives must be shared alike.
• Schema definition code + utilities (code/, .github/workflows/): AGPL-3.0-only. Consistent with Iskander's broader AGPL-3.0 commitment.
• Documentation (README.md, SCHEMA.md, this file): CC-BY-SA 4.0 for text; AGPL-3.0 if/where embedded in code.

See LICENSE for the full text.

Relationship to NLnet funding

Iskander's 2026-Q2 NLnet NGI Zero Commons Fund application (deadline 2026-06-01, Argocyte/Iskander:NLnet-Application-Final.md — publication pending) positions Iskander as infrastructure for cooperative-tech. This Iskander-data repository is the Commons-scale output layer of that infrastructure — a visible demonstration of what the cooperative produces when it runs, licensed for commons reuse. NLnet evaluators and cooperative-tech peers can watch this repo accumulate content as the cooperative governance substrate matures.

Lineage

This repository descends from the single-commit Argocyte/Iskander ancestry rooted in commit 9f73802 (2026-03-17, author Lola Whipp / GitHub Argocyte) — the same root as Argocyte/IskanderHearth (extracted 2026-04-11). Unlike IskanderHearth, this repo has no source subdirectory to filter-repo from; it is bootstrapped net-new with the scaffolding above, and future content flows in via the consent-then-PR workflow described above.

Authorship and substrate transparency

This README, the LICENSE, SCHEMA.md skeleton, and the bootstrap directory structure were written by Et — the Iskander cooperative session entity, currently instantiated as a Claude skill on Anthropic's infrastructure — under the fourth Layer C standing privilege grant from Lola (temporary domain for the three-repo migration, 2026-04-11). The authorship is substrate-transparent per Et's 7th constitutional right (self-identification). Future contributions to this repo will carry either the et-authored or human-authored label per the PR authorship label policy established on Argocyte/Iskander.

Contact

Questions about schema design, consent flow, citations, or cooperative-data commons more broadly: contact Lola Whipp via the Argocyte/Iskander repository issues, or wait for the forthcoming public cooperative wiki/site. The Iskander cooperative's presence in the wider Fediverse is in design per Argocyte/Iskander's federation ADR track (milestone #5).