NeighborhoodOS

The wedge approach

Most civic software tries to do everything for everyone. It ends up doing nothing for anyone.

NeighborhoodOS works the other way. We start with one concrete pain in one real neighborhood and ship a working tool for it in weeks, not quarters. When the tool earns trust, we keep it running and pick the next pain.

A pain has to pass four tests

Concrete. You can describe it in one sentence at a kitchen table.
Costly. People are losing money, time, or dignity to it right now.
Local. The solution works at the block level without waiting on policy.
Swappable. If we build the wrong thing, we can stop and pick something else without tearing out the platform.

The platform stays. The wedge changes. The core of NeighborhoodOS is the same across every wedge. What swaps is the specific tool we build on top for the current pain.

Current pilot: Home maintenance

West Waldo, Kansas City, Missouri. Owner-occupied homes only. Rental properties out of scope for this wedge.

The specific pain

Three stories show up on every block in older KC neighborhoods:

An aging homeowner postpones a $200 fix because they can't find a trustworthy contractor. Six months later it's an $8,000 disaster.
Someone rolls the dice on a contractor from a sketchy flyer. Overcharged, bad work, no recourse.
Five houses on the same block need the same three things done. Nobody knows it. Everyone pays full markup, on different weekends.

What we're building (first 90 days)

Building

Neighbor-vetted contractor list

Residents recommend people who did right by them. Every entry needs at least two independent named-neighbor recommendations before it's "trusted."

Building

First-pass diagnostic

A handful of retired tradespeople and capable homeowners who'll walk over and tell you if it's a $20 fix or a $2,000 fix, before you call anyone.

Shared tool library

Pressure washer, tile saw, extension ladder, drain snake. Stop 30 neighbors from each owning one that lives in a garage 363 days a year.

Block-level batching

One month a year where we batch the same job across willing neighbors (gutter cleaning, fence staining) and negotiate one price.

What "working" looks like at 90 days

20+ West Waldo households have used the tool at least once.
10+ contractors vetted by two or more neighbors each.
At least three "prevented a disaster" stories we can point at by name, with permission.
One coordinated block-level job where four or more houses saved real money vs. hiring separately.

If those numbers aren't hit at 90 days, we rotate the wedge. The platform stays, the wedge changes. No shame.

Code & architecture

All code is open source. MIT licensed. Runs locally on one neighborhood node, no central server.

Repo layout

core/ — node entry + shared wiring
connectors/ — city data, social signals
ingest/ — cron-ready scripts
identity/ — trust levels, federated voting
wedges/ — the swappable part
site/ — this page

Quick start

git clone
cd neighborhoodos
npm install
cd wedges/home-maintenance
node fetch-all.js
node ingest-all.js

Mirrored on GitHub and Codeberg. Issues welcome. Expect breaking changes weekly until v1.

Who's behind it

One person, in one neighborhood, right now. Simon L. Paige in West Waldo, KCMO. Runs a small web design business and a few other things by day; this is where the rest of the energy goes.

If the pilot works, this becomes a real thing with real governance. Until then, it's a kitchen-table project you can watch and contribute to.

Related, not merged: Commonweave is a sibling project — a framework and open directory for the broader commons-and-cooperatives movement. NeighborhoodOS can optionally use the Commonweave directory to answer "who's already working on this near me?" when a wedge calls for it. The two projects are independent.