# Working (discarded before grading)

## STATE

**problem.** A closed hour-credit exchange is destabilizing along three axes: (1) credits pool in idle balances of members who stop offering help; (2) others run deep deficits and exit; (3) some easy-to-supply services are over-rewarded relative to effort and flood the system, crowding out needed help. Participation is spiraling down. Organizers control earning/spending rules, what is tracked, limits, and member-visible information.

**meta_model.** A closed medium of exchange must keep *circulating* to retain worth, but agents treat the token as a *store of value* (hoard) or fall into *unrecoverable debt* (exit) — both kill velocity. Simultaneously the *reward-to-true-cost* mapping has decoupled, so low-cost units are over-priced and crowd out high-value ones (a Gresham/commons dynamic). All of this sits on a *self-reinforcing participation loop* near a downward tipping point. Reciprocity is the sustaining substrate; it survives only if contribution is remembered and re-entry stays possible.

**meta_model facets (for retrieval).** closed medium that must circulate or stall · hoarding collapses velocity · reward decoupled from true cost floods cheap units · shared resource degraded by overuse of the cheap option · participation as self-reinforcing tipping loop · reciprocity sustained by who-gave/who-took memory.

## VERBS RUN (in order)

1. **lift** — strip domain to the velocity / mispricing / reciprocity / tipping meta-model. *Why:* a domain-stripped structure retrieves far better cross-domain.
2. **match (search_by_facets)** — six structural facets retrieved separately. *Why:* oblique multi-structure problem; a blended query would bury latent primes. Surfaced: liquidity/buffering/turnover, tragedy_of_the_commons, free_riding, price_mechanism, tipping_points, reciprocity/reputation; archetypes circulation_loop_design, price_signal_design, iterative_reciprocity, tipping_point_prevention, payoff_restructuring.
3. **match (search_prime)** — velocity/store-of-value query confirmed liquidity, speculative_bubble, discounting, damping/balance, tipping_points, gains_from_trade. *Why:* validate the circulation axis directly.
4. **salience-rank** — ranked the four load-bearing structures: circulation/velocity > value-calibration (anti-crowding) > reciprocity-memory > tipping-loop. *Why:* the three failure modes map cleanly to the first three; the fourth governs sequencing.
5. **prune** — dropped buffering/oscillation/bubble as merely diagnostic; kept the four operative archetypes. *Why:* keep only what carries the design.
6. **get_archetype ×4** — pulled circulation_loop_design, price_signal_design, iterative_reciprocity_and_repeated_interaction, tipping_point_prevention for action logic, components, and anti-signatures. *Why:* harvest concrete mechanisms and failure conditions.
7. **evaluate-fit (gate)** — checked each against anti-signatures. *gate_log:* price_signal_design fits but trips the "access floor / essential use must not be priced out" invariant → keep a help-needs floor, never let pricing exclude genuine need. circulation_loop_design fits but warns against "movement theater" → demurrage must have a real return channel (community fund), not arbitrary decay. iterative_reciprocity fits but warns against surveillance/vendetta and mislabeling temporary inability → graduated, reversible, with forgiveness path. tipping_point_prevention fits → it sets the *operating rule* (act on early velocity signals before the spiral locks in).
8. **compose / lower** — instantiated the four into one rule set: a recalibrated price layer, soft balance bands (hoard ceiling + deficit floor) with gentle decay funding a community pool, reciprocity memory with graceful re-entry, and an early-warning operating rule. *Why:* the design must be one integrated mechanism, not four bolt-ons.
9. **reconcile** — checked the concrete model against the skeleton: velocity restored (bands + decay), crowding-out stopped (effort-indexed pricing + per-service caps), reciprocity preserved (memory + forgiveness), spiral pre-empted (warning band). Resolved tension between decay (anti-hoard) and trust (anti-punitive) by making decay slow, pre-announced, and recycled to members.

COST: ~7 operations, ~22k tokens.

===RECOMMENDATION_BEGIN===

Treat the credit as something that must keep moving, not something to accumulate. The system fails on three fronts at once — credits pool and stall, members sink into unpayable debt and leave, and a few cheap-to-offer services are paid far more than they cost and swamp everything else — so the fix has to work on all three together.

**Re-anchor what an hour is worth.** Keep the hour as the base unit, but stop paying every service a flat hour-for-hour rate when some take real skill, time, or unpleasantness and others are trivial to churn out. Set each service's credit rate from a published, periodically reviewed schedule that reflects roughly how much effort and how much genuine demand it carries, and let the rate drift down automatically when a service is being supplied far faster than anyone is requesting it. This is the direct cure for over-rewarded flooding: the moment a cheap service piles up unrequested, its payout shrinks until supplying it is no longer a free win. Cap how many credits any single member can earn per month from one service category, so no one can turn one easy offering into a credit faucet. Crucially, never let pricing lock people out of genuinely needed help — keep a small standing allowance of essential help (a few hours a month) available to any active member regardless of balance, so the calibration tunes the margins without denying real need.

**Put soft walls on both extremes of the balance.** Define a comfortable working band — say roughly minus-ten to plus-fifteen credit-hours. Below the floor, a member can still receive help but is nudged and matched toward easy ways to earn their way back, and after a grace period further large requests need a quick organizer or peer sign-off rather than an automatic block. Above the ceiling, idle balances slowly lose a small fraction each month — a gentle, pre-announced carrying cost that makes hoarding pointless and gives members a reason to spend or give. The shaved amount is not destroyed; it flows into a community pool that funds the essential-help allowance, seeds newcomers with a small starting balance, and covers members in genuine temporary hardship. Decay must be mild and visible, never a surprise penalty, so it reads as "use it or share it," not punishment.

**Make contribution remembered and re-entry easy.** The exchange survives on reciprocity, and reciprocity holds only when giving is seen and taking has consequence. Track each member's recent give-and-take and show a simple standing — active giver, balanced, or running low on contribution — visible to those arranging an exchange. Persistent takers who can give but don't gradually see lower matching priority, not exclusion. Distinguish someone temporarily unable to contribute (new, ill, busy) from someone exploiting the system: the former keep full access and a clear path back; only sustained, capable non-contribution slides priority down. Always keep a forgiveness path — a few hours of giving restores standing — so no single bad stretch becomes a permanent mark, and guard against members ganging up to freeze someone out.

**Show members the signals that drive their choices.** Publish, in plain terms, each service's current credit rate and which needed services are under-supplied, so willing helpers can steer toward where they're actually useful. Show each member their own balance, its drift, and their giving standing. Make the under-served requests the most visible thing on the board, so attention flows to real need rather than to whatever is easiest to post.

**Watch the spiral and act before it locks in.** Participation here is self-reinforcing: once active give-and-take drops, helpers stop showing up and decline feeds decline. Don't wait for collapse. Track a few leading signals every month — the share of members both giving and receiving, the spread of balances, and whether any service is dominating supply — and treat a sustained downturn as a trigger to intervene early: temporarily boost rates on scarce needed help, recruit, or run a giving drive while leverage still exists.

**Final operating rule.** Keep the credit moving and keep the give-and-take broad: price each service so its reward tracks the real effort and real demand behind it, hold balances inside a soft band that quietly discourages both hoarding and runaway debt, remember who contributes while always leaving a way back, and the moment circulation or balanced participation starts to slip, act on the early signal rather than waiting for the spiral to finish.

===RECOMMENDATION_END===
