Applied R&D cooperative

Living systems
need living tools.

We build secure, cybernetic tools that help people, teams, and organisations adapt under pressure, and learn to steward the world we're part of.

What we do Learn about membership

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The wound

We keep building dead systems for living problems.

Optimised for speed and scale, they extract more than they sustain. They watch more than they serve, turning relationships into data to be captured and sold. Knowledge bases swell into noise. Organisations harden under the very pressure they were built to absorb. The tools meant to help us respond train us to react faster and understand less. Then we add AI, and the whole thing accelerates.

The choice

Aliveness is something you can design for, or destroy.

A living system senses itself and responds. That's not luck. It's a property you can design into the things you build, or strip out of them.

Three Horizons · Bill Sharpe / IFF

Reading the transition.

Now Future → Prevalence · fit with a living world

Horizon 1

The dominant system: dead, extractive, losing fit.

Horizon 3

The viable future: living systems, aliveness, stewardship.

Horizon 2: the transition

Cybernetic R&D: carrying pockets of the future into the mainstream.

Horizon 1

1

The systems we built for speed and scale are losing their fit with a living world.

Horizon 3

3

Pockets of a different future already exist as living systems, growing.

Horizon 2: the transition

2

The transition is the work: carrying aliveness from the margins to the mainstream.

The systems we built for speed and scale are losing their fit with a living world.

But pockets of a different future already exist as living systems, growing.

The transition is the work: carrying aliveness from the margins to the mainstream.

Integrity

A living system is only alive while it keeps its own boundary.

So everything we build is secure by construction: cryptographic identity, formal verification, zero-knowledge proof. Trust you can check, not trust you have to hope for. No surveillance, no bearer tokens, no capture.

How we work

The research and the practice are the same thing.

We build these tools, use them ourselves, and learn from the work. The cooperative is a living system running on its own living tools.

01

We coordinate through the work itself.

Shared documents, visible decisions, open code.

02

Methods, tools, and governance get tested through our own practice.

If it doesn't hold for us, it doesn't ship.

03

Member wellbeing is the ground truth we work from.

The human pace is the rate limit, by design. Not AI throughput.

What we've built

We build it. In the open.

Open-source, patent-free, in the commons. A living stack, each layer an instance of the practice.

Reasoning01

Tools that can change their minds.

Defeasible reasoning: rules that hold their exceptions and revise under new evidence, rather than mistaking a rule for the truth.

hencespindle

Communication02

A language agents can extend, safely.

A formally verified agent communication language, with routing that turns ordinary processes into accountable agents.

cbclcbcl-runtime

Knowledge03

Knowledge that stays alive.

A knowledge garden that grows and prunes. Memory that surfaces what's relevant as you work. Structured data with no model lock-in.

zetlsensear-crawl

Sensing & pacing04

Technology that paces to the human.

Heart-rate variability as research data, and an AI harness that moves at the speed people can integrate. Pull-only, never extractive.

ebsvibe harness

Trust05

Prove who you are without giving yourself away.

Zero-knowledge biometric authentication. Verify your identity without ever revealing the biometric itself.

sable

Feedback & signal

Learn to steward the world we're part of.

To listen, not control. The point of a living tool is the relationship it keeps with what it touches.

People

Founding members.

Different disciplines, one conviction: that what we build should nourish people, communities, and the planet.

HO

Hugo O'Connor

Trust engineering

R&D engineer with a background in applied cryptography and supply-chain integrity. Co-founder of Bit Trade (acquired by Kraken). Enjoys making and creating things for and with other people, for good purpose.

ORCID Codeberg LinkedIn

MM

Mathew Mytka

Transformative adaptation

Imaginer, tech ethicist, and designer. Lecturer at University of Wollongong on AI and Transformation. Studies how AI integration shapes adaptive capacity in people and organisations. Known to converse with ravens and occasionally rap.

CB

Claire Barnes

Systems engineering

Software and systems wrangler, often thinking about how we can better manage complexity in tech. Loves simple, well-crafted tools designed with humans in mind. Can be found foraging for mushrooms or making strange noises with synthesisers.

DF

Dave Factor

Automation engineering

Specialises in designing and implementing automated systems to improve efficiency and reliability. A philosopher of machines and human interaction, and makes great sourdough too.

VW

Viveka Weiley

Strategic design

Designer and research convenor. Leads CSIRO's Concept Lab, where creative intelligence is grown alongside scientific discovery. Twenty-five years across participatory design, interactive geovisualisation, AI/ML, and XR. Keeps sharp tools for sashimono and the sea.

Our founding team has worked with

Work with us

Put living tools to work.

We work with organisations feeling the strain. We help them sense what's actually happening, build tools that hold under pressure, and stay in it until the work lands.

Start a conversation

Sensing & diagnostics: what's working, what's not, and why
Tools built for your situation based on real-world insights
Research partnerships, human-AI collaboration, and hands-on R&D
Governance and organisational design that bends without breaking

Open. Peer-governed. Anti-fragile. Self-learning. Life-ennobling technology: R&D to nourish people, communities, and the planet.

Anuna Research · Open software · Patent-free · Non-distributing