Harmonic Team
fast group coordination
What It Is
Harmonic Team is open-source software for fast group coordination.
How It Works
Group coordination through Harmonic Team relies on 3 data types:
Notes
Group knowledge is important, but just knowing the information is not enough. You also need to know who else knows that information.
Notes in Harmonic Team include the ability to confirm when you have read the note and signal to others that you are aware of the information.
Read more about awareness indicators.
Decisions
Group decisions require negotiation, but back-and-forth conversation takes too long.
Decisions in Harmonic Team use acceptance voting to converge on the path of greatest acceptance as quickly as possible.
Read more about acceptance voting.
Commitments
Group action has a chicken-and-egg problem. When everybody waits for everybody else to make the first move, nobody moves.
Commitments in Harmonic Team solve this problem by only taking effect if critical mass is achieved first, allowing people to signal their willingness to participate without risk.
Read more about reciprocal commitments.
Why It's Different
Group coordination is more likely to happen when members of the group participate proactively. But many common software design patterns encourage passive dependence by taking over domains of responsibility that would otherwise belong to the user.
Harmonic Team is intentionally designed to encourage proactive participation, which means that it is actually more difficult to use than typical group collaboration software. While it may seem counterintuitive, this actually makes coordination faster, easier, and more consistent.
Teams that put in the effort to learn how to use Harmonic Team well are rewarded with a higher level of competence and agency than teams that allow themselves to become increasingly dependent on software to guide their behavior.
Read more about what Harmonic Team does not do.
Humans In The Loop
As AI agents become increasingly competent, the question of how best to integrate AI into human systems remains open.
Through the API, Harmonic Team provides a flexible way for AI agents to augment human teams and for humans to monitor teams of AI agents. This makes it easier to keep AI systems aligned with the intentions of the humans responsible for them.
Read more about Harmonic Team's philosophy on the role of AI.
Pricing
Harmonic Team is open-source under the MIT license. Self-hosting is free for both personal and professional use.
Created by Ibis Coordination