How it all fits

Saint School is where the courses are. You pick a course, read each idea at whatever depth suits you, answer a few questions, and write down the one practical thing you will do about it.

Narrow Way Commons is where the people are. It is the community around Saint School: where you apply to join, where the guilds and groups are, and where courses are checked and improved before they go live.

One account works on both. You join here, and you are already signed in there.

Saint School is where the courses run. A member picks a course, reads each learning point at whatever depth suits them, answers a few questions, and records the one practical thing they have decided to do about it. Someone who only wants to learn can live entirely here and never touch anything else.

Narrow Way Commons is where the people are. It is the community around Saint School: the place you apply to join, the guilds and interest groups, the discussion, and the workshop where courses are checked, improved and approved before they go live. It exists so that people can work together, use the skills they have, and grow in them while doing so.

The two sites are joined by a single sign-in. You join on the Commons, and the same login already works on Saint School. Your guild memberships travel with you; course progress flowing back into your level here is built and still being finished.

Saint School is where the courses run, and it is the primary project. A member picks a course, reads each learning point at whatever depth suits them, answers a few questions, and records the one practical thing they have decided to do about it. Someone who only wants to learn can live entirely here and never touch anything else.

Narrow Way Commons is where the people are: the place you apply to join, the guilds and interest groups, the discussion, and the workshop where courses are checked, improved and approved before they go live. It was designed so that it could serve any collaborative project; Saint School is the project it was built for.

The two sites are joined by a single sign-in. You join on the Commons, and the same login already works on Saint School. Your guild memberships travel with you; course progress flowing back into your level on the Commons is proven and still being finished.

Behind the two sites is infrastructure a member never sees: the toolbox that builds, backs up, tests and deploys them; a source library used to check that quotations from Scripture, the Catechism and the saints are real; and the course catalogue itself, a set of files that is the single source of truth for every course, from which both sites are rendered. Both underlying platforms are open source, which fits the principle that everything here is meant to be shared.

A course is a few short sessions on one topic. Each session holds a few learning points — one idea each.

Every learning point is written at several depths, from a one-breath summary to a long treatment. The teaching is the same at every depth; only how much is said changes. So one person can do eight minutes on the train and another can spend an hour on exactly the same material.

Each point suggests one practical thing to do about it. When you take it on, it joins your Plan of Love — your own simple rule of life. A missed day is a blank, never a broken streak.

Every course has the same shape.

• A course is a small number of sessions on one topic — Introduction to Prayer, Discernment of Spirits, the Universal Call to Holiness, and so on.
• A session is one sitting, and groups a few learning points.
• A learning point is one idea: the key theological point, the thing that has to be right. Around it sits the explanation — anecdotes, stories, examples, ways of putting it that make it land.
• Depth. Every learning point is written at up to six depths, from a one-breath summary to a scholar's treatment. The teaching does not change between depths, only how much is said, and you are credited with the depth you completed.
• Audience. The same learning points can be explained differently for a young person, a married couple, a religious or a priest. The points are fixed; the explanation around them can have several versions.
• Quizzes test the knowledge, and passing one is what is credited.
• Application. Every learning point suggests a way to live it. When you take it on it joins your Plan of Love, the site's name for a personal rule of life — so called to keep it centred on the relationship with Jesus. A missed day is a blank, never a broken streak.

Levels, badges and daily practice are all voluntary. You can switch them off and simply do the courses.

Every course has the same shape.

• A course is a small number of sessions on one topic. A session is one sitting and groups a few learning points.
• A learning point is one idea: the key theological point, the thing that has to be right. It is owned by the Theology Guild. The explanation around it — anecdotes, stories, examples — is owned by the Writers Guild.
• Depth. Six levels, from a one-breath summary to a scholar's treatment, and there is no ceiling: below the deepest level of a course sit further, more specific courses, and at the bottom the original text itself. A prototype exists of an interlinear Spanish and English Interior Castle with a dictionary, for readers who want the nuance of Teresa's own words. The deepest level is rarely filled in yet.
• Audience. The learning points are locked; the explanation can have several versions for different kinds of reader. This is how the site avoids a sprawl of competing courses of unknown quality: one curriculum, one set of learning points per topic, and many ways of explaining it. The structure for audience variants exists; no variants have been written yet.
• Quizzes test the knowledge, and passing one is what is credited. Someone who arrives already spiritually mature can sit a test and be credited with what they already know.
• Application. Every learning point suggests a way to live it: a prayer to keep, a habit to build, a one-off thing to do. Taking it on adds it to your Plan of Love, the site's name for a personal rule of life. Ticking off "I prayed five minutes today" builds consistency; a missed day is a blank, never a broken streak.

Some courses have recommended sequences, because some points build on others. The comparison with a language-learning app is deliberate: levels, badges, daily practice, something to do each day. But every one of those components is voluntary, and switching them off leaves the courses untouched.

Everything made here is given to the public domain. Anyone may use it, change it and pass it on, without asking and without paying.

That is what "commons" means in Narrow Way Commons. It is why the Contribution Agreement asks what it asks: if you contribute, your work is shared with the whole world, others may edit it, and it may be used without naming you.

It also means we have to be careful with other people's work. Quoting copyright translations and modern authors has limits, so a Copyright Guild checks that every quotation and permission is in order.

Everything contributed here is dedicated to the public domain, with a permissive licence as a fallback where public-domain dedication is not recognised. That is the "commons" in Narrow Way Commons, and it is why the Contribution Agreement asks what it asks: when you contribute, you accept that your work will be freely shared with the whole world, that others may edit it, and that it may be used without naming you.

The reason is scriptural. "Freely you have received, freely give." Giving up intellectual rights over what we create is a new form of poverty — an intellectual poverty — that lets God use our creativity however he likes throughout the world.

This creates an obligation in the other direction. Some of what the courses want to quote is copyright: particular Bible translations, the Catechism, modern authors. There is a limited allowance for quoting, and beyond it the project would have to pay, which defeats the purpose. So public-domain sources are used where possible and a Copyright Guild exists to make sure quotations, permissions and the agreements members accept are correct. Getting the copyright honest is one of the conditions for opening the real site.

A guild is a group that looks after one kind of work and teaches it to its members. Within a guild there are levels, earned from what you have actually done and granted by people already at that level.

Every member starts in Sojourners, the open entry guild, and moves up automatically by completing courses.

The others: Theology (what is taught, and that it is correct), Writers (how it is written), Pedagogy (how it is taught and tested), Media (clips), Copyright (quotations and permissions), Shepherds (oversight, by invitation), Tester's Guild (finding what is broken) and Coders (the sites themselves).

You can be in as many as you like. Nobody is ranked against anybody else unless they ask to be: a guild's leaderboard of contributed work shows only the members who have chosen to appear on it, and it is off until you turn it on from your dashboard.

Two things are needed to keep the content trustworthy: experts who can check it, and a way for people to grow into being those experts. The guild answers both. A guild in the classical sense is where a craft is learned — masters and apprentices, skill passed down — and the modern equivalent is the tool with levels, where the more you do the more you are recognised for. The Commons combines the two.

Each guild looks after one kind of work and teaches it to its members. Within a guild there are levels, earned from the record of what you have actually done and granted by people already at that level. The person at the top of each guild is the expert who keeps the integrity of that guild's work. That progression, with real experts at the top, is what stops the whole thing becoming death by committee.

• Sojourners — the open entry guild every member starts in. It measures your progress through Saint School: complete courses, pass quizzes, move up levels automatically.
• Theology — the learning points themselves: what is taught, that it is correct, and how points sequence into courses. The only guild whose members may author new courses. Entered by verification, never by self-assertion.
• Writers — a full guild, with levels. The explanation around each point: intros, examples, stories, metaphors, spelling and grammar.
• Pedagogy — a full guild, with levels. How it is taught: quizzes, applications and checkpoints, and how often things are revisited so that what must be learned by heart actually sticks.
• Media — the video and audio clips attached to learning points.
• Copyright — quotations, permissions and the legal texts members accept.
• Shepherds — invitation-only oversight. Final sign-off on legal texts and on fixes drafted from feedback.
• Tester's Guild — runs courses in order to find what is broken, in a mode where nothing counts as a real formation record.
• Coders — the platform itself.

Interest groups (Creatives, Marketing, Translators, Prayer and others) are lighter than guilds: no levels, and taking part simply is your membership. An interest group can be promoted to a guild once it has real work to own, enough members, and a credential that means something. Writers and Pedagogy started that way and are now full guilds.

A person can be in as many guilds as they like. Levels belong within a guild and there is no points currency across guilds. A guild's leaderboard of contributed work lists only the members who have chosen to appear on it — it is off by default, joined and left from the member's own dashboard, and those who have not opted in are neither shown nor counted.

Two things are needed to keep the content trustworthy: experts who can check it, because the first drafts were produced by machine from human transcripts and machines make things up; and a way for people to grow into being those experts. The guild answers both, and it is the Catholic principle of subsidiarity at work: if a smaller unit can do something, nurture it in doing it. The guild system is not primarily for the project. It is a service to the people in it.

Each guild looks after one kind of work and teaches it to its members. Within a guild there are levels, earned from the record of what you have actually done and granted by people already at that level. The person at the top of each guild is the expert who keeps the integrity of that guild's work and verifies the people below.

• Sojourners — the open entry guild every member starts in, measuring progress through Saint School. It is the apprentice tier of Theology and can propose changes to learning points.
• Theology — the learning points: what is taught, that it is correct, and how points sequence into courses and courses into a curriculum. The non-skippable gate on the core teaching, and the only guild whose members may author new courses.
• Writers — a full guild, with levels, promoted from an interest group. The explanation around each point.
• Pedagogy — a full guild, with levels, promoted from an interest group. How it is taught and assessed, using what is known about how people actually learn and remember.
• Media — the video and audio clips attached to learning points.
• Copyright — quotations, permissions and the legal texts members accept.
• Shepherds — invitation-only oversight; final sign-off on legal texts and on fixes drafted from feedback.
• Tester's Guild — runs courses to find what is broken, in a mode where nothing counts as a real formation record.
• Coders — the platform itself.

Interest groups are lighter: no levels, and taking part simply is your membership. One can be promoted to a guild once it has a real bottleneck to own, enough members, and a credential that means something — which is exactly how Writers and Pedagogy became guilds. A guild can also grow sub-guilds around a new area of expertise and incubate them into guilds of their own. The design is to start simple and grow as the community grows.

How you level up. In Sojourners it is automatic: complete courses and clusters of courses. In a skill guild you make a change and submit it, somebody higher up checks it and accepts or grades it, and enough accepted work moves you up. Someone who arrives already skilled can be recognised and placed accordingly. Points come from corroboration, not activity: a proposer earns when a reviewer accepts, and a reviewer earns when that judgement is later corroborated. One-to-one mentoring is part of the design and has not been built yet.

Nothing reaches Saint School until it has been approved here.

A course is drafted, then passes each guild in turn: Writers for how it reads, Pedagogy for how it teaches, Theology for whether it is correct. Legal texts also pass Copyright and Shepherds.

Anyone can flag anything at any time — "this isn't quite right", "this confused me". It goes back into the same process. You never have to work out which category your report belongs in, and nothing is rejected in silence: if a report will not be acted on, you get a written reply.

Nothing reaches Saint School until it has been fully approved on the Commons.

1. Draft. A course starts as learning points, explanation and quizzes. The first batch was drafted by machine from human transcripts, so the underlying material is human, but every part of it needs to be reworked and checked by people. No part of what members read reaches them without a person editing it and taking responsibility for it.
2. Review by each guild in turn. Writers for clarity, spelling and grammar; Pedagogy for whether it is well explained and well assessed; Theology for correctness. Each guild owns one part decisively — a change is not done until that guild says yes, and on the core teaching Theology can say no. Legal texts additionally pass Copyright and Shepherds.
3. Approval and publication. Once approved, the course is written back to the catalogue and rendered onto Saint School. Editing it later follows the same path.
4. Feedback. Anyone can flag anything at any time. Flagged items go back into the process, and having your suggestion accepted counts toward your progress in the relevant guild.

There are three doors for feedback: the feedback form or button, for anything at all; the "report an error" page, which carries the technical details for you; and "was this helpful?" in the help panel. You never have to categorise it. Straightforward technical fixes may be drafted automatically, but anything about doctrine or about a member personally always goes to a person, and a person always approves what goes live. There is no silent rejection: a report that will not be acted on is closed with a written reply.

Who can create a new course? Only the Theology Guild, and getting there takes real formation or verifiable expertise. Anyone can suggest an improvement to an existing course, and anyone can write a new explanation of existing learning points for a different audience.

The site is Christocentric and faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church, anchored in the Catechism, the Doctors of the Church and the Fathers. Where the Church has clear teaching, the point is not open for debate here.

Where there are genuinely open theological questions, they are treated as open. Carmelite spirituality — Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross in particular — is the main frame.

Apostoli Viae, the Catholic community the project grows out of, holds overall governance and safeguards the integrity of the core teaching.

The site is Christocentric. All good theology should lead to Christ, and there is no ceiling on where the courses can go, because God is the aim and God is infinite. But the direction is fixed: total faithfulness to the Magisterium, anchored in the Catechism, the Doctors of the Church and the Fathers. Where the Church has clear teaching, the point is not open. Where there are genuinely open theological questions, they are treated as open, and the site takes a considered path through the schools, deferring to trusted people with the skills to make those calls. Carmelite spirituality, and Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross in particular, are the primary spiritual frame.

Apostoli Viae is the Catholic community the project grows out of. It holds overall governance and safeguards the integrity of the core. That does not mean only its members do the work: it can designate anyone with the expertise to run a guild, and in time the governing group could be mostly people from outside it. All authentic Catholic spirituality is welcome here.

This is not an open marketplace where anyone submits anything. It is one curriculum, one community, with a fixed set of guilds that map to the fixed parts of a course. Expertise is human and verified, tapping trusted experts as topics deepen, the way a supervisor checks a thesis. As long as the top of each guild is trustworthy, the whole keeps its integrity as it grows.

If someone wants to take the material in a genuinely different theological direction, the technology is open source and they can run their own. That freedom is deliberate.

You join by applying, and a person reads your application. The Commons is for adults: you must be 18 or over to join.

Three agreements are required: the Terms of Use, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy Policy.

Two more are optional switches, and you can say no to either and still be a member:

• The Contribution Agreement turns on your ability to contribute. Say no and you are a full, read-only member.
• The formation-data consent lets the site remember what you are learning and the practices you take up. Say no and the courses still work, but nothing is kept.

Joining the Commons is by application, read by a person. The Commons is for adults: you must be 18 or over to join.

Three agreements are required — the Terms of Use, the Acceptable Use Policy and the Privacy Policy. Two more are optional switches that turn a feature on or off, and declining either leaves you a member:

• The Contribution Agreement turns on your ability to contribute. Decline it and you are a full, read-only member.
• The formation-data consent turns on the site remembering your formation: what you are learning, the practices you take up, the reflections you write. Because that reveals religious belief it is sensitive, so it needs its own explicit consent. Decline it and you are in Trialing mode — the courses work but nothing is kept. Only you see your record, plus a level-granter where it helps you grow. It is never public and never given to an automated system. Withdraw it and the record is erased.

Trialing mode is the same mechanism for three kinds of person: someone just having a look, a member who has not switched saving on, and a tester deliberately running courses without generating a real record.

This is early. What you are looking at is a practice copy, used by invited testers to find what is broken.

Working today: both sites, the single sign-in, the application form, the guilds, the course reader with its depths and quizzes, a catalogue of around fifty-six courses, and the feedback system.

Not built yet: the real sites with real members, one-to-one mentoring, and the first course all the way through approval.

There are three stages, and the project is in the first.

• Now: the demo. Two practice sites exist so that invited testers can exercise every function and report what is broken or confusing. They carry no real members and no real data. This stage ends when every function on both is shown to work and the legal and copyright texts are sufficiently checked.
• Next: the real sites. Built clean, with real members and real data. The first complete, fully approved course is put through the guilds and published. Only then does the community begin to grow in earnest.
• After that: Saint School standing on its own, usable by itself, with the option of joining the Commons to contribute.

Built and running: both sites; the single sign-in; the application form with its agreements and consents; guilds as groups with dashboards and queues; Sojourners with its levels and badges; the six-depth course reader with quizzes; a catalogue of roughly fifty-six courses and two hundred and fifty learning points; the three feedback doors, the suggestion board and the pipeline page; the nightly reset of the practice copies; the course-building and feedback guides; the editorial workflow.

Designed and partly wired: course completion moving your level on the Commons; the Plan of Love, checkpoints and pacing; "suggest an edit" from a course page landing in the workflow here; audience-variant explanations, where the structure exists but no variants are written; levels and scoring inside the skill guilds.

Not started: the real sites; one-to-one mentoring; the first fully approved course; spaced-recall scheduling; a full original-language reader beyond the prototype.

• Learning point — one idea in a course.
• Depth — how much is said about it, from a one-breath summary to a long treatment.
• Plan of Love — your own simple rule of life, built from the practices you take on.
• Guild — a group that owns one kind of work and has levels within it. An interest group is lighter, with no levels.
• Sojourners — the guild every member starts in.
• Trialing mode — the site running with nothing saved.

• Apostoli Viae — the Catholic community the project grows out of and which governs its core.
• Narrow Way Commons — this site: the community half.
• Saint School — the course half.
• Learning point — one idea in a course; the unit everything hangs off.
• Depth — how much is said about one learning point; six levels, from short to scholar.
• Audience variant — the same learning point explained for a particular kind of reader.
• Application, checkpoint, Plan of Love — the practical thing to do, its type, and the personal rule of life they accumulate into.
• Guild — a community of practice that owns one kind of work and has levels within it. An interest group is lighter, with no levels, and may in time become a guild.
• Sojourners — the open entry guild that measures course progress.
• Shepherds — the invitation-only oversight guild.
• Trialing mode — the site running with nothing saved.
• Formation-data consent — the optional, explicit consent for the site to keep your formation record.
• Paradigm of Ascent — the synthesis of the path to holiness common to the saints, and the frame the curriculum teaches through.