Guide Cells

A Cell of people who know one domain deeply, holding that domain's current best understanding, with whom Requests for Guidance are exchanged.

A Guide Cell is a Cell first — three to thirteen, gathered in trust, carrying the whole code, self-sustaining, on a Quest of its own, passing the Flame by raising the next people who will know what it knows. What differentiates it is what it has become for the body: the tissue that knows a field and tells the rest of the body what it sees.

What it holds is Current Best Understanding in its domain — what is known, how well it is known, and what would change it. Any Cell or Actor anywhere in the body may send it a Request For Guidance; it answers with its best understanding, its confidence, and its reasoning, and records the exchange in the open so the next person who asks finds the answer already there. The exchange runs both ways: a Guide Cell asks other Guide Cells where its domain meets theirs, and asks the Cells doing the work what the field is teaching.

It is load-bearing because a body that cannot borrow wisdom it does not hold will either stall or guess. Guide Cells make expertise reachable without making it powerful: the Cell counsels and governs nothing, the asker remains the decider, and a Guide Cell's standing is only ever the quality of its guidance, tested against outcomes in a record anyone can read. A Guide Cell that stops being asked has been told something about itself (Wise Eldership, Authority).

Beside its neighbours it is precise. A Guild shares practice across many groups doing similar work; a Guide Cell answers the whole body in one field. A Wisdom Council accompanies one sovereign body's governance through its lifecycle; a Guide Cell advises anyone and rules nobody. A Cell may propose itself as a Guide Cell for a domain, and becomes one when the exchanges show that it is (Cell Types).

Also called: guide clusters Stands on: Cell · Current Best Understanding · Cell Types · Guidance Opens onto: Request For Guidance · Guild · Wisdom Council · Council · Knowledge as commons · Curation · Subsidiarity In play: Home · beyond — wherever a Cell needs to know something it does not hold Sources: Guide Cells.md (wiki root; frontmatter marks it a a proposal, unreviewed) · Cell Types.md (wiki root; draft — the first types) · Request For Guidance.md, Process For Requests For Guidance (draft) · lionsberg.wiki: Guide Cells Open: Who decides who belongs to a Guide Cell, and with what legitimacy, is unanswered — it is the same open question a neighbouring body has raised about domain communities, and the two have not been mapped to each other. · Nothing states what happens when two Guide Cells in adjacent domains give contradictory guidance.