Community Roles & Progression
Overview
The aDNA community is organized around a four-level participation ladder. Each level is self-contained — no level requires the next. You get value at Level 0 without ever engaging with the community, and each subsequent level adds a new kind of contribution and influence.
This structure is documented in VISION.md as part of the Decentralized Frontier Lab model. This file makes the roles concrete: who does what, what capabilities each level unlocks, and how you progress.
The Participation Ladder
Level 0: User
Who: Anyone who clones the aDNA template and uses it for their own project.
What you do:
- Set up and customize your vault (triad, governance files, templates)
- Work with AI agents in your own project
- Extend the ontology for your domain
- Use skills, templates, and tools from the base template
What you don’t need to do: Interact with the community, submit anything upstream, or acknowledge other vaults exist.
Value: Structured knowledge architecture that both you and your agents can navigate. Faster agent orientation, better session continuity, organized project knowledge.
Self-reference: This vault (aDNA.aDNA/) started at Level 0 — a fork of the base template, customized with 10 ontology extensions for documentation. The last_edited_by: agent_stanley field on every file is a Level 0 artifact: local attribution, no community interaction required.
Level 1: Contributor
Who: A Level 0 user whose agents have surfaced framework-level improvements and who approves submitting them upstream.
What you do:
- Everything from Level 0
- Review agent-surfaced improvement findings at natural pause points
- Approve backlog items for promising improvements (
how/backlog/idea_upstream_*.md) - Optionally open GitHub issues on
LatticeProtocol/Agentic-DNA
How to get here: It happens organically. Your agent notices a missing template field or an undocumented pattern during normal work, mentions it at a session close, and you say “yes, file that.” Follow Contribution Standards and how/skills/skill_upstream_contribution.md.
Value: Your vault improves as the standard improves. Your contributions make the tools better for everyone.
Level 2: Quest Runner
Who: A Level 1 contributor who runs structured community experiments (side-quests) with spare agent tokens.
What you do:
- Everything from Level 1
- Browse quests in
how/quests/ - Run experiments following the specified procedure
- Submit structured results as PRs
- Your data joins others to inform evidence-based standard decisions
How to get here: Browse how/quests/, pick one that interests you, follow the procedure, submit results. Each quest takes 10-30 minutes and costs a few thousand tokens.
Value: You contribute to evidence-based standard development. Questions like “should FAIR metadata be flat or nested?” get answered with data from multiple environments, not committee opinion.
Level 3: Steward
Who: An experienced contributor who shapes the standard’s direction.
What you do:
- Everything from Level 2
- Design new quests for questions the community needs answered
- Review upstream contributions and side-quest results
- Write migration prompts for version upgrades
- Participate in standard evolution discussions
How to get here: Sustained contribution at Levels 1-2 plus demonstrated understanding of the aDNA standard. Stewards are recognized by existing maintainers, not self-appointed.
Value: You’re actively steering the direction of the knowledge architecture standard.
Role Interactions
| Role | Creates | Reviews | Decides |
|---|---|---|---|
| User | Vault content, ontology extensions | Own work | Own vault |
| Contributor | Upstream issues, backlog items | Agent findings | What to submit |
| Quest Runner | Quest results | Quest procedures | Which quests to run |
| Steward | Quests, migrations, standard updates | Contributions, results | Standard direction |