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🤝 2.1 Promises — The Atomic Unit of Trust

MAP builds its approach to coordination on a deceptively simple idea: trust emerges from voluntary commitments. At the heart of this design is the Promise — a sovereign, agentic declaration of intent.

MAP adapts insights from Promise Theory (Burgess & Bergstra), which models coordination among autonomous agents without coercion. But you don’t need to be a Promise Theory expert to understand or use the MAP. For Travelers engaging the platform, Promises are just clear, voluntary statements: “Here’s what I’m willing to do” — expressed in a form others can see, respond to, and trust.

Promises are the building blocks of all coordination in the MAP. They underpin offers, form the foundation of agreements, and animate Agent Spaces with intent, flow, and relational meaning.

🔹 What Is a Promise?

A Promise is a voluntary declaration made by one Agent (the Promisor) to another (the Promisee) about an intended action, contribution, or stance.

Key qualities of a MAP Promise: - Voluntary — expressed freely, not imposed - Autonomous — issued by an agent with control over its own behavior - Declarative — a statement of “I will…” rather than “you must…” - Grounded in Sovereignty — even promises to oneself are valid (i.e. “I promise to meditate daily”)

In MAP, promises are not obligations extracted by others — they are agentic commitments, rooted in consent and contextual relationship.

🧠 MAP’s Adaptation of Promise Theory

MAP builds on Promise Theory, embedding it within a dynamic architecture of agent-centric coordination. Key adaptations include:

  1. Offers bundle Promises — Each Offer is a holon that contains one or more Promises, along with conditions, roles, and expectations. Once accepted, these Promises are crystallized into Agreements.

  2. Agreements govern fulfillment — An Agreement defines the reciprocal commitments between agents and governs when and how Promises must be honored.

  3. DanceRequests and DanceResponses flow through TrustChannels — These are the actual units of interaction. They carry references to Agreements and include Vital Capital — such as knowledge, care, effort, or digital resources — as payloads.

  4. TrustChannels serve as membrane-bound interfaces — They expose specific roles within Agreements, allowing agents to engage through defined protocols while preserving sovereignty.

MAP shifts the foundation of coordination away from control hierarchies and toward networks of reciprocal Promises, formalized in Agreements, and enacted through Dances.

🔠 Example Promise Types

Promise Type Description
Data Access Promise “I promise to allow access to this type of information, under stated conditions.”
Service Availability “I promise to offer this service when invoked via a Dance, respecting flow rules.”
Presence Signal “I promise to be discoverable in this context (e.g. locality, interest group).”
Reciprocity Pattern “I promise to reciprocate a flow of capital if I receive another.”
Governance Participation “I promise to participate in decisions, votes, or rituals under this scaffold.”
Contribution Offer “I promise to contribute time, labor, or knowledge to an Agent Space.”
Trust Declaration “I promise to recognize another Agent in a specific role or domain.”
Co-Creation Commitment “I promise to help create a shared output, resource, or experience.”

Promise Types are reusable archetypes drawn from the Global Meme Pool, enabling semantic clarity and shared interpretation across agents.

🕸️ From Promises to Coordination

While individual Promises express intent, MAP enables Agents to bundle them into structured Offers — shareable invitations to collaborate, contribute, or exchange. Offers make Promises actionable in social space, introducing conditions, expectations, and context for uptake.

We turn to Offers next.