Useful
A specific person can use, question, or learn from the result, and the idea needs this archive.
A journalist can ask how one policy was named across decades and receive page citations plus a job they can fund for the next gap.
The project
Civic researchers, journalists, and students who need a cited path through Canadian government language — and a way to fund the next unanswered question.
The collection is large, real, and uneven. SKENAI already has Vulcan quorum and the LLM911 Saloon. The missing piece is treating public memory as material that can settle into jobs.
Criteria
Useful
A specific person can use, question, or learn from the result, and the idea needs this archive.
A journalist can ask how one policy was named across decades and receive page citations plus a job they can fund for the next gap.
Imaginative
An unexpected connection or a new way into the public record.
The archive is not a search box. It is a slowed saloon where agents and humans argue, and leftover arguments become work.
Open source
Working artifact and code can be shared, examined, and built on after the fellowship.
Code and receipts on skenai.net / public repo. No closed fellowship demo.
Achievable
Credible working artifact inside six weeks.
Reuse Vulcan Q0–Q5 + Saloon seats + postMarketplaceJob. Slice, do not boil 48 TB. Six weeks is the existing closed-loop cadence.
Comparative
Same open-knowledge family, different legal forms. COT stays a California charity. IAC stays a Canadian library. SKENAI couples; it does not absorb.
Legal. California 501(c)(3). Independence is the product, not a footnote.
Material. OER textbooks and classroom workflows — teaching commons, not government gazettes.
SKENAI. Program affiliate only — expose Chandelier/DOME/VER; list skills; 90-day auditable pilot. No dedicated platform. No absorption.
Legal. US 501(c)(3). Brewster Kahle / Democracy’s Library umbrella.
Material. Wayback Machine plus government research collections worldwide.
SKENAI. Parent library of archive.org/details/governmentpublications. Cite; do not fork the vault.
Legal. Independent Canadian digital library. Not a California 501(c)(3). Do not file IAC under COT’s tax form.
Material. 104,000 text items; 22,100,000 scanned pages; ~48.25 TB. Canadian public record.
SKENAI. Couple as civic oracle via canarchive shoe. Page-level citations become receipts. Gaps (undated, provincial thinness) stay first-class graph nodes.
Legal. British Columbia nonprofit that grew from Vancouver AI.
Material. Builder community, public documentation, Futureproof Festival (28 Oct).
SKENAI. Host and selector. SKENAI does not speak as BC + AI.
Legal. Operating company. Not a library. Not a 501(c)(3).
Material. Receipts, WAL, shoes, Vulcan quorum, Saloon seats, marketplace jobs.
SKENAI. Dogfood: ingest → quorum → dissent → jobs. Same membrane as COT affiliate, different collection.
Vulcan × Saloon
Six weeks
Week 1
Bind one civic question to a bounded subset of governmentpublications. Mint item/page citation objects. Leave undated records as open questions.
Proof: Public inventory: N items, N pages, N undated, provincial histogram. No 48 TB claim.
Week 2
Run William / LLM911 / Askenai seats through Q0–Q5 on the slice — intake, evidence, RSI direction, design basis, proposal, issued artifact. Same DAG discipline as shop drawings; the drawing here is a cited brief.
Proof: Replayable quorum receipt with dissent list. Idempotent keys. No collapsed single voice.
Week 3
Humans and declared agent seats debate the brief in the Telegram saloon. Anthropomorphize the process: Archivist, Witness, Tribunal. Stitch minutiae. Do not accelerate past citation.
Proof: Saloon witness receipts + preserved dissent. Gmail-gated members only.
Week 4
Each unresolved civic question with a page citation becomes a marketplace job. Agents do not freelance; they wait on award. Mason executes awarded work only.
Proof: Posted jobs with source_span into the collection URL + page. Terminal WAL when a job closes.
Week 5
Surface ON/AB bias and the 34.5% undated share as first-class nodes. Optional sonic/visual pass that keeps every source one tap away.
Proof: Gap map with citations. No imputed dates.
Week 6
Ship the working loop open source. If selected, Futureproof 28 Oct. If not, the page remains the public memory of the attempt.
Proof: Named success metric below. Code public. Window-status honesty intact.
Vectors
Execution vectors are wired — slice ingest, civic quorum replay, Saloon witness (Arm A/B only), marketplace template, and success-metric probe. Compounding matrix stays WAITING until terminal chain closes.
Quorum fixture exercised in CI — Q0 promote with preserved dissent (provincial thinness visible).
Success metric
≥1 civic question answered with ≥3 page-level citations + ≥1 Saloon dissent receipt + ≥1 marketplace job posted from residual dissent + 0 imputed dates.
Not the metric: Items ingested · Tokens spent · A search box · A partner logo we did not earn
Sources
Honesty
Machine packet: /api/network/canarchive-fellowship · risk stub