Agora Project (Flancian, 2019)

Sources

Root config, sources manifest, and community contract: https://github.com/flancian/agora
Pull-based aggregator: https://github.com/flancian/agora-bridge
Renderer and web frontend: https://github.com/flancian/agora-server

The Agora project is a three-repo software system and its running instance at anagora.org. The root repository holds the sources.yaml manifest that names each contributor's git garden and a CONTRACT.md naming the community's social agreements; the bridge is a long-running worker that pulls each listed source on a schedule; the server renders the aggregated result under a shared wikilink namespace. A reader encountering [[foo]] on the running instance sees the union of contributions whose filename-slug matches foo, drawn from many gardens, with each contribution presented as a distinct block attributed to its contributor.

Adopted for a later phase

External sources list as aggregation manifest. A flat YAML file naming each third-party git repository, with per-entry url, target, format, optional protocol, and URL templates for edit links and web views. The pattern is sources.yaml at the Agora root; DeepContext's later-phase equivalent would name which external gardens a rendering surface aggregates.
Tool-agnostic contribution layer with format tag per source. Each source declares its flavor (foam, obsidian, logseq, roam, jekyll, mycorrhiza, markdown, org, mycomarkup); format-specific translation happens at ingest. Contributors keep editing in whatever tool they already use.
Pull-based aggregation worker with per-source status tracking. The bridge records last-attempt, last-success, last-error per source so aggregation failure at one garden does not fail the whole surface.
Cross-source wikilink resolution as a union, not a merge. Resolution presents every contribution whose slug matches; it does not normalize or elect a canonical version. This is consistent with [[Translation Over Convergence]] and [[Vocabulary Diversity Is a Feature]] at the rendering layer.
No-404 composition. Every wikilink resolves to something — at minimum, an invitation to contribute. Dead ends become participation surfaces rather than broken links.
Filesystem as truth, rendered graph as derived artifact. The aggregated JSON graph is exported from parsed filesystem content; the filesystem is authoritative.
Edit-link delegation via URL templates. The aggregator links back to each source's upstream editor rather than hosting editing itself. Each entry carries an edit: URL template (e.g., https://github.com/flancian/garden/edit/main/{path}); the aggregator fills in the path per contribution. This pattern is compatible with [[Adopt Scion Publication Model]]'s first-class Web-UI edit path.
Typed sources in one manifest. The manifest accepts more than one kind of entry: individual authoring gardens and shared collaboration surfaces (named stoas upstream) both register through the same API, distinguished by a type tag. DeepContext's later-phase equivalent may name distinct kinds of source while keeping the single-manifest discipline.
Governance-fork clause as a social-layer primitive. The Agora's CONTRACT.md names forking as a legitimate response to contract incompatibility — a subset of the community may fork the Agora itself with no presumption of ill intent. This is distinct from code-level repository forking and names an explicit social exit at the conventions layer.

Not adopted

Aggregator as a separate always-on service. The bridge is a worker; the server is a Flask application; the full stack requires deployment infrastructure (uWSGI, SystemD, caching, optional Forgejo hosting). DeepContext's model is self-contained publication: a scion produces its own live site on GitHub Pages with no external service required. The aggregator-as-service model is incompatible with the friction floor [[Adopt Scion Publication Model]] commits to.
Federation as the primary unit. Agora treats the aggregated namespace, not the individual garden, as what a reader visits. A contributor's garden is source material for someone else's rendered surface rather than a published site in its own right. DeepContext's current scope is single-repo canonical publication; a scion is a first-class live site, not a feeder.
Per-contributor does not publish. A contributor registering a garden in someone else's Agora does not get their own rendered surface from that registration. This differs from DeepContext's commitment that a scion's first push builds the scion's own site.
ActivityPub federation. Agora's server publishes per-user ActivityPub actors with signed Create activities for new subnodes. DeepContext has no federation commitment; the pattern is named here because it may become relevant if a later phase touches cross-graph aggregation.

Key moves to remember

The governance-fork primitive and the code-level repository fork are distinct moves. The former is a community exit when agreements become incompatible; the latter is a technical operation on a git repository. Both are relevant to DeepContext, but they answer different questions.
Agora's unit of participation is a garden registered in an aggregator's manifest; the garden does not produce a live site on its own. This is the structural contrast with DeepContext's scion-publishes-itself commitment that [[Adopt Scion Publication Model]] makes.
The aggregator-plus-many-gardens model and the scion-as-single-repo model are not competitors — they address different scales. Agora's patterns are worth naming for the later phase where cross-graph aggregation becomes load-bearing; the MVA Stance defers building until that need surfaces.
Translation happens at ingest (format-to-format), at resolution (cross-source union), and at contract (the governance-fork exit when vocabularies cannot be reconciled).

Relations

informs_downstream::[[Adopt Scion Publication Model]]
- The Decision commits to a scion-publishes-itself unit of participation that differs structurally from Agora's aggregator-plus-gardens model. This Reference is one of the precedents the Decision contrasts with — Agora's model shows what aggregation-first federation looks like, and the Decision names why DeepContext's current scope chose self-contained publication instead.
informs_downstream::[[Adopt Minimum-Viable-Architecture Stance]]
- The MVA Decision defers cross-garden aggregation, translation at the aggregator, and interactive federation surfaces. The Agora project is a precedent the deferred capabilities draw their specific shape from; this Reference is the study substrate for if and when those capabilities become load-bearing.
informs_downstream::[[Wikis Without Curation Drift Toward Write-Only]]
- The Observation's Grounds name Agora and Anagora as one of the traditions the write-only drift appears in — sustained contributor enthusiasm for a period followed by a slowdown as link-integrity and ontology-reconciliation work outpaces contributor willingness to do bookkeeping. This Reference is the specific source that grounding reconstructs from.
informs_downstream::[[Translation Over Convergence]]
- Agora's cross-source wikilink resolution presents multiple gardens' contributions as a union rather than a merge, consistent with the Conviction's commitment to holding distinct claims as distinct claims. The resolution layer's translation is thinner than the cross-vocabulary translation the Conviction asks agents to do, but the architectural direction is the same: preserve difference, do not normalize.
contrasts_with::[[Wikilinks and Named Edges Gist (Christopher Allen, 2026)]]
- The gist specifies the per-node convention layer — wikilinks, named-edge predicates, annotated edges, form contracts. The Agora Project addresses the complementary cross-node-set layer — how many gardens' contributions aggregate into a shared namespace. The two References occupy adjacent territory at different scales: the gist is primary convention source; this Reference is federation model.