The Relationship Operating Framework is an open documentation framework for stewarding real relationships across time. It helps people preserve continuity, honor commitments, respect consent and boundaries, re-engage without turning a relationship into a transaction, and use tools or agents without giving away human responsibility.
It is for individuals and teams caring for professional, community, partner, customer, collaborator, mentor, peer, and other long-running relationships. It does not decide whom a person should know, contact, influence, or sell to.
Read the framework in this order:
- Charter — purpose, audience, scope, independence, and exact Commons adoption.
- Principles and boundaries — the relationship-specific commitments that govern practice.
- Practice guide — practical questions and actions for individuals, teams, and assisting agents.
- Glossary — the small vocabulary used by the framework.
Then use:
- Examples to see the guidance applied without claimed results;
- Research and evidence to distinguish principles, experience, proposals, and validated findings;
- Governance to understand authority, change, review, and releases;
- Contributing to propose an improvement;
- Code of Conduct for participation expectations;
- Security and privacy before disclosing sensitive material; and
- Public review records for exact-commit review evidence and its limits.
flowchart TD
C["Charter<br/>purpose, scope, and authority"]
P["Principles and boundaries<br/>Relationship-specific commitments"]
G["Practice guide<br/>questions and accountable decisions"]
E["Fictional examples<br/>illustrative choices"]
X["Glossary<br/>necessary terms"]
R["Research and evidence<br/>bounded learning and proposals"]
V["Governance<br/>controlled change and release"]
C --> P
P --> G
G --> E
X --- P
R -. "may inform a proposal" .-> V
V -. "controls canonical change" .-> C
The solid reading path moves from authority to practical use; fictional examples illustrate the guide but never amend it. Dotted lines show that research may inform a governed proposal but cannot change canonical guidance by itself.
Before acting in a relationship, ask:
- What relationship and shared history actually exist?
- What commitments, consent, preferences, or boundaries already govern it?
- What would support continuity or create value without manufacturing debt?
- Is re-engagement welcome, and can the other person decline without cost?
- What should an accountable person decide now: follow through, contribute, reconnect, repair, wait, close, or do not contact?
- What minimum context should remain so the relationship is not forced to restart from zero, and what should be corrected, removed, or left private?
These are non-sequential stewardship questions, not stages, scores, or a universal relationship lifecycle.
This is not a sales framework, lead funnel, lead-scoring model, CRM specification, outreach engine, application, runtime, schema, protocol, automation architecture, CI system, or machine-readable conformance layer. It does not rank people, infer intimacy, purchase reciprocity through contribution, or authorize autonomous contact.
Tools may help a person remember, prepare, draft, or notice a missed commitment. A human relationship owner remains accountable for what context is kept, what judgment is made, and every external action.
Relationship adopts Open Framework Commons
v2026.09.05,
whose annotated tag peels to release commit
8868a248457dd7b663563beb243c5ebcbb8ac360.
Commons supplies shared ecosystem principles and boundaries. This independent
framework owns its relationship method, terminology, examples, research,
governance, and releases.
Relationship is distinct from the Influence Operating Framework v1.0.0. Influence guides useful contribution and responsible participation in communities. Relationship guides truthful continuity, commitments, consent, repair, and stewardship across time. A practitioner may use either or both; neither framework absorbs the other.
| Path | Reader job | Authority |
|---|---|---|
framework/ |
Understand and practice Relationship | Canonical framework |
decisions/ |
Understand accepted material choices | Decision rationale; cannot silently amend canonical documents |
examples/ |
See fictional applications | Illustrative; cannot amend the framework |
research/ |
Evaluate evidence and open questions | Research record; not doctrine |
project/releases/ |
Inspect release scope and compatibility | Release record; not doctrine |
project/reviews/ |
Inspect exact-commit review evidence | Review record; not doctrine |
GOVERNANCE.md |
Understand authority and releases | Repository governance |
CONTRIBUTING.md |
Prepare and review changes | Contribution process |
Version 2026.09.05 is the first calendar edition. Publication state is recorded on its release page. It independently adopts Commons v2026.09.05. The release record explains substantive changes to help-seeking, contact boundaries, capacity and privacy. The date identifies an edition, not compatibility or effectiveness.
No edition has longitudinal real-world validation or certifies a person, team, tool or implementation.
The examples are fictional and illustrative. Documentation review can show clarity, coherence, misuse resistance, and publication hygiene; it cannot prove relationship quality, consent, legal compliance, professional fitness, or real-world effectiveness.
Use GitHub Issues for proposals and questions, and pull requests for prepared changes. Never put private relationship context, personal data, confidential material, or sensitive conduct reports in a public issue or pull request.
The framework is available under the MIT License. Citation metadata
is provided in CITATION.cff. Material changes and release
history are recorded in the changelog.