HOW CORE WORKS
People contribute. AI helps investigate. Humans decide.
CORE is a virtual Earth for working on real problems. The path has five stages. Each one below says what works today and what is not built yet.
1 · DISCOVER
Where do problems come from?
Today
The CORE team records problems from dated public data it is allowed to use. San Francisco has two open missions: Folsom Street signal timing and the affordable-housing pipeline.
CORE does not automatically find the world’s problems. Other cities on the Earth have no investigation yet.
Planned, not built yet
Residents, researchers, institutions and companies bring problems they see, and agents examine them using authorized data.
2 · CONTRIBUTE
What do I actually do?
Today
More than chat. You open a mission, question the agents and challenge what they say, test your own assumptions in a calculation, compare scenarios and write your notes.
You can also save an observation or idea with a place and a source link. It stays in this browser: nobody receives it yet, and we say so on screen.
Planned, not built yet
Accounts, shared contributions with moderation, photos, and votes on priorities. Participation stays free, and a subscription never buys influence.
3 · INVESTIGATE
What do the AI agents do?
Today
Agents are software roles, not people. They use a mission’s authorized evidence, run permitted calculations, state what is missing and set options side by side. They cannot act in the real world, and they decline if you ask them to.
On this public site, agents answer from recorded work and bounded calculations, with each answer labelled. A seven-agent investigation run on a local model is shown as a recording, not live.
Planned, not built yet
More capable agents that work live on broader authorized data.
4 · EVALUATE
What validates a solution?
Not one thing, and not the AI. Six separate checks build on one another. Today, only the first two exist.
- Evidence checksWorking
Sources, licences and declared gaps are checked in code before anything is used.
- Exploratory simulationsWorking, uncalibrated
Useful to compare ideas. They are not forecasts and prove nothing about the real street.
- Scientific model validationNot done yet
Models must first be calibrated against real measurements.
- Independent expert reviewNot available yet
No reviewers are connected. A review request stays in your browser and nobody receives it.
- Institutional decisionOutside CORE
Only the responsible institution can decide. CORE controls no government or public infrastructure.
- Measured real-world outcomeNone so far
No CORE proposal has been implemented or measured in the real world.
5 · FOLLOW IMPACT
What happens to my contribution?
Today, your work stays with you in My CORE. Everything after the first two steps below is the intended path and is shown for illustration only: none of it exists yet.
- Saved in your browserWorks today
- Marked for review, in this browser onlyWorks today
- SubmittedIllustrative
- Under investigationIllustrative
- Evidence assessedIllustrative
- Scenario exploredIllustrative
- Awaiting expert reviewIllustrative
- Considered by an institutionIllustrative
- Approved for implementationIllustrative
- Implementation underwayIllustrative
- Impact measuredIllustrative
Who can act? Only the people and institutions responsible for the real place. CORE can prepare the evidence for them. It does not control their decisions.
WHERE CORE STANDS
The honest picture, today
- Vision
- A shared virtual Earth where people and AI work on real problems, growing into a global infrastructure for collective intelligence. This is the long-term aspiration, not a present achievement.
- What exists today
- A public prototype: a 3D Earth with six cities, two San Francisco missions you can run in your browser, and local contributions. No accounts yet.
- AI agents
- The registry holds 510 software agent identities, 501 of them for San Francisco. 35 have recorded work. One recorded investigation used seven agents on a language model; on this site agents answer from recorded work and bounded calculations.
- Scientific status
- No model is calibrated, no independent review has taken place and no real-world improvement has been measured.
- Traction
- About 30 early testers have given feedback. No revenue, no customers and no signed partnerships.
- What comes next
- Accounts, shared and moderated contributions, independent scientific validation, then more cities and more capable agents.
- CORE World and CORE Business
- CORE World is the free public Earth, where participation stays free and equal. CORE Business and institutional plans are proposed, not available: private workspaces, authorized data and defensible reports for organizations. Their revenue is meant to fund free access, and a subscription never buys influence.