An open studio building technology that preserves attention and cultivates equanimity.
We, the users, are being used.
The thesis
Engagement makes you want what feels good and reject what feels bad.
Engagement tech makes us more reactive.
Equanimity helps us observe feelings, good or bad, and look past them to what really matters.
Equanimitech makes us more intentional.
The framework draws on Vipassana practice, where awareness and equanimity are taught as the two wings of wisdom. We treat this lineage as a working hypothesis: technology may be able to support, in small ways, what the practice has long cultivated. Whether it can is what we are here to find out.
Can we design interfaces that sustain and cultivate equanimity?
The framework
Sovereignty over data is the foundation. Respecting attention is the moment-to-moment practice. Cultivating equanimity is the long-term outcome. Nine principles in three layers, each with a design test.
Sovereignty
Local-First Ownership
Does this work offline? If our servers shut down, does the tool keep working?
Holistic Control
Can the user disable any feature without breaking the whole?
Modification Rights
Can a technical user fork it? Can a non-technical user freeze the version?
Awareness
Peripheral Presence
Can the user safely ignore this for hours?
Attentional Granularity
Does content depth track attentional depth, gross to subtle?
Bounded Experiences
Does this interaction have a natural end? If the user stops, is that a feature?
Equanimity
Strategic Friction
Is the compulsive path harder than the intentional one?
Fade-by-Design
The user needs the tool less over time, through internalization. If a user stopped after six months, would we celebrate or panic?
Downstream Allocation
The user fills the slots. Recommender systems are upstream allocators; whiteboards with magnets are downstream.
A design hypothesis, not a validated causal model: the principles create the structural conditions under which equanimity can emerge. They do not produce it.
The first question
Before that question can be answered, a smaller one comes first: how do we measure equanimity in a product, not just in a practitioner?
Equanimity can be measured in people. The EQUA-S scale (Dambrun, Juneau, Ricard) validates the construct in trained practitioners. No instrument yet measures it passively in products. The leap from "reduces compulsion" to "nurtures equanimity" is plausible but unproven.
Closing this measurement gap is our first investigation. The principles above are how we hope to design; the gap is what we need to solve so we can know whether the design works.
The deeper question
Engagement was a measurement choice. The metric became the product, and the product became the water we swim in. We have forgotten there was ever anything else.
Goodhart's Law in slow motion: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Metrics don't just describe the thing. They shape it. A platform optimized for engagement, sustained over years, makes humans more reactive. A platform optimized for something else would make humans something else.
The honest question isn't whether AI will outpace human intellect. It already has, in narrow ways, and the trend continues. The honest question is whether the technology we build alongside it leaves room for what intellect alone has never reached.
The work
Four working projects. Different scales. Same principles.
// SOVEREIGNTY
Ambient context for AI, stamped by humans.
The substrate for autonomous work where agents draft at volume, humans vouch for what matters, and no vendor sits in the middle. Local-first. Filesystem-authoritative. Built in the open.
// SOVEREIGNTY
Portable, in-document attestations for markdown.
DID-identified signers, keys in the OS keychain, callable by agents over MCP. The cryptographic stamp that lets a human vouch for what an AI wrote.
// AWARENESS
The whiteboard, made software.
Plan your day in three-word moments. Three at a time, three times a day, three days ahead. No streaks, no scores, no notifications. The constraints are the point.
// EQUANIMITY
Attentive technology for the distracted age.
A browser extension and desktop companion that keep the day on keel. Wind-down rituals, night lockdown, strategic friction where compulsion creeps in: the intentional path stays the easy one.
The door
If you're building something in this direction, or thinking about it, come in. The door is open.
rafaba@hey.comFor occasional field notes, there is the newsletter.