# Shown *Updates on our community progress* By [Sensemaking - SpiritDAO's Weekly Newsletter](https://paragraph.com/@spiritdao) · 2026-09-14 --- Contents: --------- 1. Introducing: Places & Journals 2. We Took the Whole App Apart and Put It Back Together 3. Improving our Documentation 4. A Big Round of Bug Fixes 5. Agreements Are Becoming Real Signatures 6. The Constitution Monitor Works on a Phone Now 7. Upcoming events * * * Introducing: Places ------------------- This past week we we're asked a question: could the app hold a shared map of the places that matter to them; the land they steward, the partners they work with, the sites where they gather, and a shared journal for the vision they're building toward? Could they call it a journal rather than a forum? Yes. Both shipped this week. ### Journal: the forum, the way a community actually uses it Any pod forum category can now be switched to **journal mode**. Nothing changes about who can read it or write in it. What changes is how it reads: entries newest first, grouped by month, each with a cover photo, the author, the date, and a short excerpt. Writing an entry uses the formatting editor by default, so headings, lists, and images come naturally. Pair it with Pod Faces from last month, rename the Forum button to Journal, and your community sees that word everywhere it looks — including the page heading. _Pod leaders: Manage → Forum, create a category and choose Journal, or switch an existing one._ ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1ba805509cd77e1c11abcc6fa821c763881319c1005c20653e970edf4e61cda1.png) ### Places: a members-only map of your community A new **Places** add-on puts a map on your pod's page. Pin your land and assets, partner organizations, gathering sites, shared resources, and the places you're still envisioning. Each pin carries a description, a photo, and connections — to journal entries, to the people who steward it, and to other pins, drawn as a line between them. A few choices we made on purpose: **Members only.** Nobody outside the pod sees the map, and photos on it are served only to members. There is no public mode. **Ideas look like ideas.** A pin marked _Proposed_ draws with a dashed outline, so a vision never passes for a fact. **Vagueness is a feature.** Any pin can be marked _Approximate_, shown as a shaded circle rather than a point. Use it for anything sensitive. **Managing pins is a role.** Every member can view. Adding and editing requires the new Places Manage permission, which pod leaders hold by default and can grant to any role. And you can put yourself on the map, if you want to. From **Identity → Location**, choose to appear on your pods' maps. It's off unless you turn it on. By default we store your location approximately (~1 kilometer) and show it as a shaded circle. Only people who share a pod with you can see it, only while sharing is on, and you can remove it any time. Nothing about your location is ever public. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4ba2c4d9a280e382d363ef40888fff3e064ebedb3623083ffe6a43046f76e8ba.png) _Pod leaders: Manage → Modules → Add-Ons → Places. Rename the section to whatever fits your community._ * * * We Took the Whole App Apart and Put It Back Together ---------------------------------------------------- Every so often a project needs to stop building and look hard at what it has built. This week we did exactly that: a top-to-bottom review of the SpiritDAO Community App, reading every subsystem against its own documentation. Identity and sign-in, pods and roles, treasury and governance contracts, forum, chat, events, bounties, marketplace, notifications, knowledge base, and the Community Agent architecture. Sixty-six screens. One hundred sixty-one API routes. Seventeen scheduled jobs. About twenty-five live contracts on Base. **The good news first.** The architecture holds together the way we say it does: roles really are on-chain, every transaction really is gasless and signed by your own wallet, and the AI-agent constitution that shipped in August is the most rigorously built part of the platform. We also verified on-chain — twice, independently — that pod treasuries cannot be touched by anyone who doesn't hold the pod's management role. **A stronger front door.** The review also found something we needed to fix right away, and we did. When you sign in, Coinbase verifies who you are, your Google account or email code, and holds your wallet keys. That part was always solid. What our own server did _not_ do was independently confirm that the browser talking to it actually held that Coinbase session. It took the wallet address it was given on faith. As of this week it no longer does. Every sign-in now carries a short-lived proof from Coinbase, and our server checks that proof before opening your session. The same standard now guards onboarding, invite codes, device linking, and a set of older routes that act on your behalf. If the proof is missing or doesn't match, the door stays shut. You won't notice any difference signing in. That's the point. Nothing about your wallet, your tokens, or anything on-chain was ever exposed, and we have no indication this was ever misused. But _"we trusted it"_ is not the same as _"we checked it"_ — and a community that runs on verified participation should hold its own sign-in to that standard. If you spot something that looks wrong, tell us. That's how this one got found. * * * Improving Documentation ----------------------- The user guides have always told you where to click. Now they show you. **Eighty-three screenshots** have been captured and placed throughout the guides — the bounty board, the survey builder, the vault, the journal, the map, the constitution monitor, the appearance picker. They appear in all three places the guides live: the Knowledge Base inside the app, the docs on [spiritdao.org](http://spiritdao.org), and the guide files themselves. If you've ever read "open your pod's Manage page → Modules tab" and wondered whether you were looking at the right thing, you no longer have to guess. We also corrected three places where the documentation described something that doesn't exist: a governance delegation page that was never built, a description of vault setup as one-time (your key is deliberately discarded when you close the tab — that's a security property, not a bug), and a $SELF holdings screen that doesn't exist. We'd rather say what the app does than what we meant it to do. * * * A Big Round of Bug Fixes ------------------------ Photographing every screen in the app is an excellent way to find out which screens are wrong. Most of what follows was discovered by someone trying to capture a feature and finding it didn't behave as the guide claimed. ### The app was failing silently in several places. The app is full of messages meant to tell you what just happened — "Saved," "Agreement signed," "Could not connect to the treasury." We realized that **none of them have ever appeared on screen.** The component responsible for displaying them was never added to the page, so every one of those messages, from 59 different parts of the app, went nowhere. The practical effect: when something failed, you saw nothing at all. A button that looked like it did nothing may have been reporting a real error into the void. That's now fixed. The app tells you what's happening — including when it goes wrong. **If you ever gave up on something because clicking produced no response, it's worth another try.** ### Survey results showed 0% for every option A survey with a clear winner displayed "1 total response" and then 0% for every choice. The votes were recorded correctly; the tally simply couldn't match the stored answers. Fixed — and every answer recorded before the fix has been repaired. No one needs to vote again. Percentages are also measured properly now, against the people who answered _that question_ rather than everyone who opened the survey. ### "Your community voted not to renew this agent" — when it had voted yes A renewal referendum passed unanimously, 2 in favor and 0 against, and the agent was switched off anyway. The vote met the approval threshold but missed quorum — only 2 of 50 members voted, where 15 were needed — and the app reported a turnout failure as a defeat. It now says what actually happened, with the numbers, and clearly separates "the community declined" from "not enough people voted." **Kairos is running again.** ### The password vault wouldn't open Vault setup failed with a single word: "forbidden." A Coinbase embedded wallet is really two addresses (one that signs, one that transacts) and only one had ever been recorded against your account. The vault needs the other, both are now registered at sign-in. ### Bounty notifications led nowhere Every notification about a bounty — bid approved, work submitted, dispute filed — linked to a page that doesn't exist and never has. Clicking **View** produced a 404. Those links now open the bounty itself with the right card expanded, including old notifications sitting in your history. ### And a handful more **Checkout** could fail with nothing shown on screen; the cart now explains what went wrong and resolves your pod's treasury address directly from the blockchain rather than a stored value that had drifted. **External wallet linking** offered one specific brand based on whatever your browser announced; it now reads "Link external wallet" and works with any of them. **Video calls** failed for everyone — a credential pair for our self-hosted meeting server had been entered backwards since May, and the app's security policy blocked connections to it. Both fixed. **The Places form on mobile** now runs full-screen with controls always reachable. * * * Agreements Are Becoming Real Signatures --------------------------------------- Pod agreements have until now been signed inside the app, with the record held in our database. You had to trust us that the signature existed. Creating and signing an agreement are now **on-chain transactions**. A signature is recorded on the blockchain, where anyone can verify it independently — including after we're gone from the picture. Gas is sponsored, so signing costs you nothing. To be precise about what this does and doesn't do yet: agreements are recorded and verifiable, but they don't yet _gate_ access to a role. Turning that on would immediately make every member who hasn't signed ineligible for their role — not something to do casually to a live community. It will happen deliberately, with notice, once signature coverage is high enough to be fair. * * * The Constitution Monitor Works on a Phone Now --------------------------------------------- [/constitution](https://app.spiritdao.org/constitution) shows live, on-chain proof that our AI agents hold no vote, no governance role, and no participation standing. It was unreadable on a phone and effectively unfindable. It now reads properly on a small screen, and each pod's agent settings link straight to the proof for _that_ agent. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/295b241fc20ce5d9a2cd93c90ef81ed0ac4a353b68ed6a76800f26eecaaaa692.png) An accountability page nobody can reach is not accountability. * * * **Upcoming Events** ------------------- We strongly recommend registering for events within the SpiritDAO app (Events section) at [app.spiritdao.org](http://app.spiritdao.org), it's how we gauge attendance and shape the flow of each session. **Town Hall** — Mon, Sept. 14th · 8:00 PM EST - A standing community gathering for conversation, questions, and shared presence. [Join here](https://meet.google.com/twa-ghig-qxp) **First Contact** — Wed, Sept. 16th · 8:00 PM EST - The official starting point for new members — a peer-to-peer orientation into how participation works. [Join here](https://meet.google.com/twa-ghig-qxp) **Feedback Loops** — Fri, Sept. 18th · 8:00 PM EST - A live working session where the community helps shape the app. Bring your bugs, your questions, and your ideas. [Join here](https://meet.google.com/twa-ghig-qxp) * * * SpiritDAO is 100% donor-funded. There are no subscriptions, no paywalls, no venture capital. Every community on this platform uses it for free and that's by design. Our runway is small, and every donation directly extends how long we can keep building. If this work matters to you, even a small contribution goes further than you'd think. → [Donate at spiritdao.org/donate](https://spiritdao.org/donate) SpiritDAO is a registered 501(c)(3). Your donation is tax-deductible. (EIN: 99-1308806) ### Questions? The best way to get in touch is within our community: [https://app.spiritdao.org](https://app.spiritdao.org) Or write to Ron Rivers: [ron@spiritdao.org](mailto:ron@spiritdao.org) [Donate](https://www.spiritdao.org/donate) * * * Thank you for reading! Please share this email with any friends you think might enjoy this newsletter. We are spreading the message one curious person at a time. Subscribe Share **Connect with SpiritDAO** 🧠 [SpiritDAO App](https://app.spiritdao.org) 🌐 [SpiritDAO.org](https://spiritdao.org) ▶ [YouTube](https://youtube.com/@spiritdao) 🐦 [Twitter](https://twitter.com/thespiritdao) / X 📱 [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@thespiritdao) 📜 [Docs](https://spiritdao.org/docs) **SpiritDAO is a registered 501(c)(3) EIN #99-1308806.** --- *Originally published on [Sensemaking - SpiritDAO's Weekly Newsletter](https://paragraph.com/@spiritdao/shown091426)*