Open Civic Grammar

Open Civic Grammar is an emerging open standard for composing and structuring Civic Functions according to shared, transparent rules.

This document is a public overview of the Grammar's purpose, current architecture, and design principles. It is not the formal specification. The specification is in development and will define the schemas, contextual dimensions, entity-resolution rules, equivalence rules, versioning, and implementation requirements needed for interoperable use.

Civic expression is naturally diverse. People can take comparable civic positions using different words, languages, levels of specificity, reasons, and emotional framing. General semantic similarity alone is not enough to determine when two measurable civic positions should be treated as the same, distinct, or related.

Open Civic Grammar addresses a narrower problem than expression itself: how to give the measurable component of civic participation enough shared structure to be compared and aggregated without standardizing the expression surrounding it.

On .one, a Civic Post can contain a Civic Expression and a Civic Function. The Civic Expression is the user's own communication. The Civic Function is the structured, measurable component through which participation can contribute to Civic Signal.

Open Civic Grammar applies to Civic Functions. It does not rewrite, canonicalize, or analyze a user's Civic Expression.

Civic Functions take three forms:

• Poll - measures support or opposition.
• Score - measures evaluation or performance.
• Rank - measures priorities among competing options.

The Grammar provides shared rules for forming Civic Functions consistently enough to support matching, translation, comparison, and aggregation.

A Civic Function can contain structural and contextual elements such as:

• Civic Function type
• actor, when applicable
• action, evaluation, or priority
• object or subject
• scope
• jurisdiction, when applicable
• temporal context, when applicable
• safety constraints
• uncertainty and distinction rules
• semantic relationship rules

These categories describe the current architecture at a high level. The formal specification will define how they are represented and how they interact.

A central design problem is separating the core measurable position from contextual dimensions that may change how a Civic Function should be interpreted or compared.

Jurisdiction, geography, time, institutional scope, and other contextual attributes can be relevant without necessarily changing the underlying civic position. The developing specification will define when contextual differences preserve equivalence, require distinct Functions, or create a relationship between Functions.

The same actor, institution, policy, place, or concept can appear under different names.

Acronyms, abbreviations, aliases, alternate institutional names, translations, and multilingual equivalents should not create artificial differences in civic measurement.

Open Civic Grammar is therefore being designed to distinguish linguistic or naming variation from substantive differences in meaning. The formal specification will document entity-resolution and normalization rules, including how ambiguity is handled without silently changing a user's intended Civic Function.

Comparable Civic Functions do not always belong in a single category. Some may express the same measurable position; others may differ in scope, actor, jurisdiction, time, or meaning; still others may be related without being equivalent.

The Grammar provides the structural basis for these distinctions. The Civic Signal Engine uses that structure, together with semantic analysis, to surface potentially comparable Functions. The user remains in control of which Civic Function represents their position.

A current reference workflow is:

1. User enters or selects a Civic Function
2. Grammar-based structure and validation
3. Canonical representation of the Civic Function
4. Semantic matching and translation
5. User confirms, edits, or writes their own Function
6. Aggregation of engagement with shared Civic Functions

The Civic Signal Engine operates on Civic Functions for structure, matching, translation, and aggregation. It does not process the user's Civic Expression.

Different Expressions can accompany the same measurable civic position:

• Governments should end fossil fuel subsidies.
• Stop giving taxpayer money to oil companies.
• Public funding should no longer subsidize fossil fuel producers.

Each author can retain their own Expression while choosing a shared Civic Function such as "Governments should end fossil fuel subsidies."

Open Civic Grammar structures the Civic Function. The Civic Signal Engine can then surface comparable Functions so users can decide whether an existing Function represents their position.

A live proof of concept has demonstrated:

• AI-assisted Civic Function composition
• Civic Function canonicalization
• semantic similarity matching
• similar-Function suggestions
• cross-language Civic Function translation
• continuous aggregation

These capabilities demonstrate the feasibility of using shared structural rules to support Civic Function composition and aggregation. They do not constitute a complete implementation of the future Open Civic Grammar specification.

The formal Open Civic Grammar specification is expected to document:

• formal Civic Function schemas
• Poll, Score, and Rank composition rules
• contextual dimensions including jurisdiction, geography, scope, and time
• entity resolution for names, acronyms, aliases, and multilingual equivalents
• equivalence, distinction, and relationship rules
• canonicalization and uncertainty handling
• safety constraints
• versioning and provenance
• interoperability requirements
• reference implementation behavior and evaluation methods

Publishing these rules openly is intended to make the structure used for civic measurement transparent, examinable, and reusable rather than dependent on a proprietary model or a single platform.

The .one Foundation intends to develop Open Civic Grammar as reusable public infrastructure. Planned outputs include a formal specification, open-source reference implementation, software libraries and APIs, multilingual evaluation, safety and threat-model documentation, implementation guidance, and public evaluation datasets. The goal is not to standardize what people say. It is to provide a transparent common structure for the Civic Functions through which civic positions become measurable.

Open Civic Grammar is intended to provide an interoperable structural layer for civic measurement. A mature open standard could allow independent platforms, archives, civic technologies, and research systems to exchange and compare measurable civic positions while preserving users' original expression and without depending on any single platform or AI provider.