OpenCosmos
How might we create technology that helps people feel at home in the universe?
OpenCosmos is a creative platform built on a simple recognition: we are not separate from the universe we inhabit. Not observers of it. Not masters of it. Participants in it. Dance partners with it.
Status: Active Development
License: MIT
Philosophy: Read WELCOME.md — The front door
Design Principles: Read DESIGN-PHILOSOPHY.md — The North Star
What This Is
This repository is opencosmos.ai, the site that serves the OpenCosmos commons:
- The Library: a public-domain corpus of contemplative texts and verified quotations, readable and cross-linked.
- The constellation: the corpus drawn as a knowledge graph.
- Cosmo: an AI companion whose values are a versioned document, grounded in the Library and citing it.
- Inception: bring a personal AI agent into being. Cosmo draws it out of you, and it goes home with you.
- Xensō: a game you play as yourself. The challenges are the real ones of your life.
The site does not contain the commons. It fetches them at build time from their own repositories, each with its own licence and invitation (ADR 0018):
| Repository | What it holds | License |
|---|
| opencosmos (this one) | the site | MIT |
| knowledge | the corpus and its tools | CC0 |
| cosmo | Cosmo's constitution | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| taoteching, iching | open translations | CC0 |
| opencosmos-ui | the design system, @opencosmos/ui on npm | MIT |
Quick Start
git clone https://github.com/opencosmos-ai/opencosmos.git
cd opencosmos
pnpm install
pnpm dev # fetches knowledge, cosmo and taoteching into .content/, then serves http://localhost:3000
If ../knowledge, ../cosmo or ../taoteching exist as sibling checkouts, the fetch copies them, so local edits show up. Otherwise it clones them. From taoteching it takes only data/atlas-export.json, which the Tao Te Ching reader is built from.
Core Philosophy
This platform is built on four principles:
- Emotionally Resonant — Touch hearts, not just solve problems. Design should delight.
- User Control & Freedom — Users customize their experience. Motion intensity, themes, everything.
- Transparent by Design — Show the receipts. Users see how things work, including AI collaboration.
- Generous by Design — Open source, teachable, accessible. Code that teaches as it works.
Read the full philosophy →
Development
Prerequisites
- Node.js 24+ (see
.nvmrc)
- pnpm 10 (pinned in
package.json)
Commands
pnpm dev # Dev server (fetches content first)
pnpm build # Production build (fetches content first)
pnpm content # Re-fetch knowledge, cosmo and taoteching into .content/
pnpm adr:index # Regenerate the ADR index after adding one
Other scripts: scripts/README.md.
Updating Design System
When a new version of @opencosmos/ui is published:
pnpm update @opencosmos/ui
pnpm build
Local Development with Design System
When testing design system changes before publishing:
# In the opencosmos-ui repo
cd packages/ui && pnpm link --global
# In this repo
pnpm link --global @opencosmos/ui
# Don't forget to unlink when done
pnpm unlink @opencosmos/ui && pnpm install
Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|
| Framework | Next.js 16 (App Router) |
| Language | TypeScript 5 (strict) |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS |
| Design System | OpenCosmos/UI (@opencosmos/*) |
| Package manager | pnpm |
| Deployment | Vercel |
| Retrieval | Upstash Vector + Redis |
| Inference | Claude (Anthropic API), shared free tier or bring-your-own-key |
License
MIT © Shalom Ormsby
Our work is our love made visible.
