The Garden / working brief

A framework for owned operational data.

The Garden is an open-source, AI-native foundation where people own their data, install modules as work surfaces, and let those modules cooperate around the same real-world objects.

The Shift

Most software makes the application the owner of the workflow. HubSpot owns the CRM. Asana owns the task system. Notion owns the workspace. GoHighLevel owns the automations. The user rents an interface and leaves their history inside someone else's silo.

The Garden flips that. The durable layer is the person's operational data: contacts, tasks, notes, files, messages, call history, projects, activity streams, relationships, and the JSON events that explain what happened.

Modules do not own the truth. They express it, extend it, and act on it with permission.

The Analogy

The Garden should be to operational data what Obsidian is to notes, WordPress is to websites, Steam is to games, and an OS is to applications.

A roofing CRM, a sales CRM, a ministry tool, a bookkeeping module, and a task system can all exist as installable modules. They may have different workflows, but they should be able to meet around the same client, task, contact, file, note, or timeline.

Shared Reality

If a bookkeeping module creates a client task, that task should appear in the task module. It should also show on the client timeline in the CRM. If there is an email, text message, file, or note connected to it, an AI assistant with permission should be able to reason across that full context.

The task is not duplicated. The client is not duplicated. The history is not trapped inside the bookkeeping module. The Garden is the shared reality underneath; each module is a lens and a workflow on top.

Core Objects

The first foundation is a small set of objects that should outlive any individual module.

  • people
  • organizations
  • contacts
  • phone numbers
  • email addresses
  • tasks
  • notes
  • files
  • messages
  • activities
  • projects
  • entities
  • relationships

Doctrine

  1. Owned data first. Modules second. UI third.
  2. A contact is still a contact when the CRM changes.
  3. A task can belong to a person, a company, a client, a project, and a module without being duplicated.
  4. Modules should be removable without erasing the user's history.
  5. AI agents should operate through permissions, context, and audit trails.

Permissions

The hard problem is trust. A third-party module cannot receive the whole Garden by default. It should declare the objects it needs, the entity or context it operates within, and the actions it wants to perform.

A CRM module may request contacts, companies, messages, tasks, and activity history. A task module may only need tasks, projects, notes, and files. A finance module may need clients, documents, invoices, and finance-domain records. The user or entity admin approves the scope.

First Proof

The first version should prove the framework, not just another CRM. A user has a personal Garden, belongs to multiple entities, installs a CRM module, a task module, and a finance module, then watches one piece of work move through all three without losing ownership or context.

The Garden is not the app. The Garden is the place where apps can finally share reality.