Core tenets
01

Build it, don't pitch it.

A deck is not a project. If you can't show progress, you don't have a project yet — you have an idea, and ideas are free.

02

Vision and craft are the same job, done by different hands.

The person who dreams it up and the person who knows how to make it real are doing equally hard work. Neither one outranks the other, and neither gets to coast on the other's labor.

03

No mystical exemptions.

"I'm not technical" doesn't excuse you from learning enough to communicate clearly. "I'm not creative" doesn't excuse you from caring about the thing you're building. Pick up the parts of the craft you're missing.

04

Structure serves the vision — it doesn't replace it.

Engineers don't get to quietly redesign someone's idea into something safer, smaller, or easier to manage and call it "helping." If the box doesn't fit the dream, fix the box.

House rules

The practical norms underneath the tenets.

Contribute before you lead.

Show up. Help someone else's build before you ask anyone to help yours. Crews are earned, not assigned.

Say the budget out loud.

Time, money, and skill are real constraints, not bad vibes to push past. A project that's honest about its limits gets built.

Critique the work, not the worker.

Bad welds, weak code, and unclear ideas all get called out directly — the person attached to them does not.

Build, share, grow together

This is the bar. If it sounds right, see how groups actually form around it.