Celestial Mechanics
We've borrowed the language of astronomy deliberately. Not for novelty, but because orbital mechanics provides useful intuition for how coordination works.
The movements of celestial bodies—their orbits, conjunctions, gravitational relationships—follow patterns that mirror human coordination. Understanding these patterns helps explain what we've built and why.
Plans
In astronomy, a conjunction occurs when celestial bodies appear to meet in the sky. These are moments of alignment—brief, observable, significant.
On the platform, plans are conjunctions. They're specific moments when people decide to converge in the same place, at the same time, for a shared purpose. A dinner. A run. A workshop. A gathering.
Plans are the basic unit of coordination. Everything else exists to make good plans more likely to happen.
Unlike a calendar event, a plan is social from the start. It's not just scheduled—it's proposed, shared, responded to. The plan exists in a space between intention and action. It's a commitment to show up.
Orbits
Planets follow orbits—stable, recurring paths around a gravitational centre. They return, predictably, to similar positions. The orbit creates rhythm.
On the platform, orbits are groups. They're collections of people who regularly coordinate together. A running club. A book group. A team of collaborators. A circle of friends who meet for dinner.
The metaphor captures something important: orbits imply recurring motion. An orbit isn't a one-time gathering—it's a container for ongoing plans. The group has gravitational pull; it keeps people returning.
Orbits can be public or private. Public orbits are discoverable—anyone can join. Private orbits require invitation. Both create stable contexts for repeated coordination.
Constellation
Look at the night sky. The stars form constellations—patterns we see from our position in space. Different observers, different positions, different patterns.
Your constellation is your personal network of connections. It's not objective—it's your view, from where you stand. The people you've encountered, shared events with, connected to through shared interests.
The constellation visualisation shows closeness based on overlap: shared events, shared interests, shared orbits. People who appear near you are people with high affinity. People at the edges are weaker ties—acquaintances, distant connections, potential bridges to other networks.
This is Granovetter's insight made visible. Your close ties cluster together. Your weak ties stretch toward other clusters. The value often lies at the edges—the connections that bridge you to worlds you're not yet part of.
Anchors
Every celestial system has gravitational anchors—bodies massive enough to hold other objects in orbit. The sun anchors our solar system. Jupiter influences asteroid paths. Mass creates stability.
On the platform, anchors are the organisers of a plan. They're the people who create it, host it, take responsibility for it happening.
Anchors aren't just attendees—they have gravitational pull. They set the location, the time, the purpose. Other people respond to what the anchor proposes. Without an anchor, plans float aimlessly.
Being an anchor carries responsibility: you're committing to show up, to make the thing happen, to hold space for others. In return, you shape the plan. You're not just a participant—you're the gravitational centre.
Plans can have multiple anchors. Co-organising distributes the gravitational load. When anchors align, the plan becomes more stable—more likely to happen, more robust to individual flakiness.
Satellites and Primaries
In our solar system, moons orbit planets, planets orbit the sun. There's hierarchy: primary bodies and their satellites.
Plans can have the same structure. A conference might be the primary plan; the after-parties, breakout sessions, and side meetings are satellites. They orbit the main event. They derive their timing and purpose from it.
This captures how coordination actually works. Big events spawn smaller ones. A festival generates unofficial gatherings. A wedding creates rehearsal dinners and morning-after brunches. The primary plan provides the gravitational context; satellites orbit within it.
Satellite plans inherit some properties from their primary—dates, locations, participants overlap. But they're distinct plans with their own anchors, their own responses, their own attendees. The relationship is structural, not hierarchical in control.
Companions
Some stars exist in binary systems—two bodies of roughly equal mass, orbiting each other. Neither is primary. They're companions, gravitationally linked but equivalent.
Plans can be companions too. Two events that happen alongside each other—not one orbiting the other, but both occupying the same temporal space. A hackathon and a demo day. A workshop and its corresponding social dinner. Related, linked, but peers.
Companion plans are useful when coordination splits naturally into parallel tracks. Attendees might go to both, or choose between them, or flow from one to the other. The link helps people navigate: if you're interested in this, you might be interested in that.
The Mechanics in Practice
These aren't just metaphors. They're operational principles encoded in how the platform works:
Plans are the unit of commitment. Everything else—orbits, constellations, relationships—exists to increase the likelihood of good plans happening.
Orbits create recurring gravity. They lower the coordination cost for the next plan, because the group already exists. You don't have to reassemble the guest list.
Your constellation is your coordination capital. The stronger your network, the more plans become possible. But it's not about quantity—it's about the right distribution of close ties and weak ties.
Anchors bear the responsibility. The platform makes coordination easier, but it can't replace the human commitment to make something happen. Anchors provide that.
Relationships between plans create structure. The satellite/primary and companion links help navigate complexity. When many things happen at once, relationships help people understand what goes with what.
The platform follows celestial mechanics because coordination follows similar laws. Gravity pulls people together. Orbits create stable rhythms. Alignments create moments of intensity. And the whole system, like the cosmos, is in constant motion.
The goal isn't to control this motion. It's to make it visible, to reduce friction, to help good conjunctions happen. The universe coordinates itself; we just lower the activation energy.