How ORIA Is Developed

Built the way it asks you to hold a belief.

ORIA is developed the way it asks people to hold beliefs: openly, in proportion to evidence, and with a visible record of what is settled, proposed, and unresolved.

A repository of records

ORIA is written and kept in a public repository. Every substantive document records its own status — for example developing, foundational, unresolved, historical, or superseded — and nothing is treated as canonical simply because it is stored or published. Website copy like this page derives from those records and is never doctrine on its own.

Decisions and open questions

Choices that affect identity, doctrine, structure, or public presentation are made in numbered decision records, and genuine uncertainties are kept in an open-question register. A question is closed only by a recorded decision — never by content that quietly assumes an answer. Superseded material is preserved, not erased; history is appended to, not rewritten.

How change happens

Substantive change follows a path: propose, review, approve by decision record, version, supersede, and archive. Corrections are expected and made visibly. This is deliberately slower than simply editing a website, because the point is a trustworthy record rather than a persuasive surface.

The books, developed the same way

The longer texts — the Living Book, the Book of Inquiry, the Handbook, and the Founding Story — are being developed inside this same system, as immutable editions with transparent change. They are unpublished drafts; testimony is never treated as proof, and no edition is canonical.