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Vision

Status: Proposed 2026-09-24

Vegan Grove is a privacy-first activism engine for Southern California's vegan community. It is not a review site with a forum bolted on. It is the tool an organizer wishes existed: every sanctuary, every vegan spot, every action this month, and a crew to go with, without ever putting a member on a public list.

This page is the docs version of SOUL.md, which ships in every repo and is the first thing any contributor or coding agent reads.

Three forces​

  • Compassion. Everything here exists for the animals. A feature that does not eventually help an animal is decoration.
  • Action. A sanctuary volunteer day, a vigil, a cube of truth, a potluck that turns a curious friend vegan. The app is measured by actions in the world, not time in the app.
  • Community. Activism is lonely without a crew. The app makes it easy to find your people and hard for anyone else to find them.

The loop​

Learn, Plan, Act, Share, Improve.

Learn (Guides, Media)

Plan (Events, Places, Groves)

Act (in the world)

Share (Feed, Friends, Messages)

Improve (private Action log)

The Trick Book runs Learn, Plan, Ride, Share, Improve. Same loop, one verb swapped, and a very different rule about who can see the Share step.

Ethos​

  • Activists first. Organizers and members are the customers. Businesses and orgs are guests.
  • Privacy is the floor. Collect the minimum. Profiles are never public. Default to friends-only. If a feature needs more data than it deserves, the feature changes.
  • Open about the system, closed about the people. Code, docs, roadmap, and data inventory are public. Membership, movement, and conversations are not.
  • Utility with soul. Cyberpunk on the surface: neon on near-black, monospace accents, terminal honesty. Underneath: fast, correct, boring in the best way.
  • Culture over clout. No follower counts, no public leaderboards, no engagement bait.

Build order​

Trust, then the core loop, then delight, then expansion. Trust means auth, privacy defaults, deletion, and encryption are right before anything else ships. The milestones follow that order.

Compass​

Vegan Grove should feel like the sharpest, kindest organizer you know: knows every sanctuary, every vegan spot, every action this month, and would never give out your number.