North Canterbury · © John Stroh
We are looking for a small number of independent collaborators, trusted in a region or a sector, to help suitable organisations take up this work.
The pursuit of ‘Goodness’ in AI — Sovereign agents, and what it takes to trust one with real work
My Digital Sovereignty is looking for a small number of independent collaborators who are trusted within a particular region, professional field, or community sector.
We call these collaborators Distributors. The term is practical rather than grand: a Distributor helps suitable organisations understand the Village and related services, decide whether they are a good fit, and adopt them successfully if they choose to proceed.
This is an invitation to explore a possible working relationship. It is not an offer of employment, a franchise, an exclusive territory, or a completed commercial agreement.
The work described in this research is about more than software. Small organisations need technology that fits their actual practices, obligations, relationships, and capacity. That work is rarely solved by a remote sales process or a larger advertising budget.
A Distributor brings something My Digital Sovereignty cannot create from a distance:
The company provides the platform, product development, technical architecture, documentation, training material, and central support. A Distributor provides the local knowledge and trusted relationship needed to introduce the work responsibly.
The role will vary by sector and location, but it may include:
A Distributor is not expected to be a software developer or a large technical organisation. The intention is that routine platform operation remains centrally supported, while local technical work — where it is required — can be provided by people already equipped to do it in that area.
The Village is a private online environment for a single organisation or community. It brings together functions that many groups currently spread across separate services: member information, announcements, discussions, events, calendars, documents, polls, video meetings, and member communications.
The platform is intended for organisations that want a more private and durable alternative to advertising-funded or externally controlled platforms. Its design priorities include:
The governance API is a separate offer for organisations that already have their own software but need a structured way to manage proposed actions, approvals, records, and limits. It is not yet generally available: the interface and the records are built, and the engine that would issue live verdicts is not switched on.
Some parts of the platform are operating today. Other parts — including the full distributor programme and aspects of the control-plane design — are still being developed and tested. We will distinguish clearly between the two in any conversation.
The intended model is collaborative rather than extractive. We do not want a Distributor relationship that treats local organisations as leads to be captured by a distant supplier, or that leaves a Distributor dependent on terms they cannot influence.
The broad principles are:
These are design principles, not final terms. The first formal arrangement should be developed with a prospective Distributor who understands the relevant market and can identify what would make the arrangement workable.
Several matters are deliberately open because they should be resolved with practical evidence rather than assumed in advance:
We will not present these matters as settled when they are not. A serious partnership needs clear terms, a realistic view of costs and responsibilities, and a shared understanding of what the platform can and cannot yet do.
The role may suit an independent adviser, technology provider, community-network organiser, professional-services firm, sector association, managed-service provider, or other person or organisation that already works closely with small and medium-sized groups.
You may be a good fit if:
An initial conversation is exploratory. We would want to understand the organisations you know, the services you already provide, the problems your customers are trying to solve, and whether the Village or governance API is relevant to them.
We would also discuss what you would need in order to represent the work responsibly: product information, technical support, training, commercial clarity, local service boundaries, and a credible way to end the arrangement if it proves unsuitable.
If this work is relevant to the organisations you serve, we would welcome an initial conversation. We can show you what is operating now, explain what remains in development, and discuss whether there is a realistic basis for a Distributor relationship.
An enquiry creates no obligation. Any appointment, commercial arrangement, territory, service responsibility, or revenue-sharing arrangement would be agreed separately and recorded in writing.
To begin a conversation, contact John Stroh at john.stroh@mysovereignty.digital.
The foreword below is by John Stroh, written in his own words. It sets out the thinking behind the invitation above; the recap that follows is the essay built around it.
Background as of early September 2026
The search for goodness in AI needs an addendum that cements its proposition in the real world. What matters now is our focus on enhancing the stacks required to deliver Good AI in the distributed structures that the “Blueprint” calls for. The structures themselves are embedded in the sovereign signed and sealed record, with a timestamp. In just a few months the AI landscape has changed from a focus on LLMs, to Agent and now onward to the governance of the full integrated architecture and agentic organisation that must be harnessed effectively. New engineering skills are emerging from harness engineering to loop engineering and there are other contenders chomping at the bit.
The Goodness in AI essay series points at the published research material from which the series had evolved. Each of the related articles here was another step into understanding the requirement for Goodness in AI. I would like to summarise those components going back many months. They were indeed discrete steps that lead to deliverables in the Village and its substrates, the evolving API and the Village Agentic Cockpit that is still work in progress.
The complexity
The difficulty in painting a cohesive picture of the road ahead lies not only in the imponderables of how the battle between the China and US, and to a lesser degree the EU, evolves but far more on the speed at which human beings have the capacity to absorb the changes upon us. This in itself is a complex dimension of research I would like to capture here. Speculation on the speed of delivery of the physical components of the emerging hybrid AI human exosphere (research Ben Reid’s work) does not make matters easier. There are other dimensions of the evolving AI landscape that may be too complex to enable full understanding by any single AI researcher and certainly by the majority of readers of an essay like this one. Helping to at least catalogue those complexities is a step towards understanding the road ahead.
The Road ahead
It would be tempting to try and conjure up a timeline of expectations but that would be a distraction. What is important to me now is to provide a roadmap to deliver our version of goodness in AI. Such a roadmap inevitably breaks the boundary of these research pages and lands in a space that is clearly ‘commercial’.
If the niche market for the AI Goodness deliverables we are delivering to a global market can be realised, the solutions we are offering must find replication at scale. I do not claim to have the only valid approach to Goodness in AI - there are many approaches that may have lighter philosophical focus and many that will deliver commensurate ‘goodness’ by other means. I do not speak for them or to pretend that I have a clear understanding of the emerging field pursuing this world market niche.
Having said that, I can only make my vision a reality if My Digital Sovereignty Ltd. can find Distributors for the Product. The Road ahead section in this essay encapsulates our vision of a Distribution network and how the relationship with distributors might evolve. Read this section in the essay as a proposal to work with me.
John Stroh My Digital Sovereignty Ltd john.stroh@mysovereignty.digital
Research: https://agenticgovernance.digital Platform: https://mysovereignty.digital
The research published on this site asks what it would take for an organisation to use AI and digital infrastructure without giving up practical control over its data, its authority, its records and its ability to leave. Six documents set out the argument, and each is short enough to read on its own.
My Digital Sovereignty Limited is building the Village platform and related governance infrastructure as one practical response. John Stroh is both the author of the research and the director of the company. That creates a commercial interest, and readers should take it into account.
The research proposes standards that any arrangement should meet. The company’s platform is one attempt to meet some of them. Neither validates the other, and either may be wrong independently of the other. The evidence, the limitations and the open questions are set out in the six documents above and in the sources page for each.
The platform is not presented as finished or independently assured. Some services are operating; others remain in development. There has been no independent penetration test, and questions remain about portability, governance, capacity, and the form a sustainable operating model should take.
One practical conclusion is already clear enough to act on. Technology alone will not determine whether an organisation can adopt this work well. Adoption depends on people who understand a sector or a place, have standing with the organisations in it, and can help them judge whether the change is worth making.
That is why My Digital Sovereignty is exploring a network of independent Distributors, and why the invitation above is an invitation rather than an offer.
First, if organisations take this up as readily on their own as through someone they already trust, then the case for Distributors is our need dressed as a finding. It should be withdrawn, not restated. The comparison is simple enough: how do organisations fare arriving directly, against arriving by introduction?
Second, if stating the commercial interest changes nothing a reader does, then the disclosure is a courtesy rather than a correction. The effort belongs where it changes an outcome.
Third, if a Distributor cannot get straight answers about who holds their data, what we can change without asking them, and how they would leave, then this work will have set a standard and built something that fails it. Those answers should be demonstrable rather than promised. The first attempt to check them should find something.
| Evidence | The project’s own dated record — commits, publications, registers and constitutional clauses — cited by identifier so a reader can open them. External material is quoted from the instrument that carries it. |
| Not evidenced | That a distribution network of the kind proposed works. None exists, no cell has been run, and no distributor has been appointed. |
| 🔴 Interest declared | The author of this piece sells the thing it argues for. |
What this publication does not claim, and what is outstanding against it in the register.
A question this rests on is parked: What secession premium will members bear?
We publish no pricing and no affordability claim, and we do not assert that members value the secession guarantee.
A question this rests on is parked: Does NZ domicile actually resist foreign compulsion?
We do not claim that a New Zealand entity is beyond foreign compulsion. We claim only that its exposure differs from that of a foreign-parented operator, and that the difference is untested.
A question this rests on is parked: Does accredited contribution in exchange for entitlement create an employment relationship?
We do not claim that accredited contribution in exchange for an entitlement of monetary value is outside New Zealand employment law, and we do not claim that it is inside it. The mechanism is described as proposed, not as available, until counsel has answered.
A question this rests on is open: Does secession capability actually convert a buyer?
A question this rests on is open: Can we author a standard we also hold?
Alongside: questions and answers · sources and provenance · slides