helpWe get these a lot

Common questions, asked plainly.

What ARA does, who it fits, what to do about the WhatsApp-and-Google-Docs habit, and how to try it without committing to anything.

ecoAbout ARAgroupsIs ARA for us?categoryWhat does ARA do?todayDay to dayhelp_outlineCommon concernsplay_arrowGetting started
eco

About ARA

What it is, who builds it, why these strange names.

ARA is the shared digital home for intentional communities, ecovillages, cohousing groups, housing co-ops, and land trusts. It holds chores, governance, gatherings, shared resources, contributions, and a versioned library of agreements in one place. The name comes from the Latin word for an altar or sanctuary.
Arbos Folk, a small studio focused on tools for land stewardship and community resilience. No venture capital, no growth-at-all-costs incentives. The team is small on purpose so the product can stay slow on purpose.
Most software for community work was designed for offices, and that vocabulary leaks back into the communities that use it. ARA borrows different language. Sanctuary for a community, Garden for a long project, Seed for a single task, Scroll for a versioned document. The point isn't to be quaint. The words a tool gives you shape what the work feels like. The longer version is in the Manifesto.
groups

Is ARA for us?

Where ARA fits, where it doesn’t, and what to expect.

Yes. Ecovillages were the audience we built for first. The Council handles consent-based decisions, the Rhythm rotates chores fairly, Gardens track long projects through their seasons, and the Library remembers agreements across decades.
Yes. Cohousing was one of the closest fits from day one. Shared meals, the common-house calendar, kitchen rotations, the workshop with the tools that always go missing. All of those have direct shapes in ARA.
Yes. Housing co-ops have most of the same shape as cohousing: shared spaces, dues to track, decisions to record, agreements to remember. ARA covers all of that. If your co-op also collects rent or formal dues, the Ledger handles that side too.
Yes. The Ecosystem tier is built for this. It lets multiple sanctuaries federate, share bulk-buying capacity, run cross-community gatherings, and roll up activity into a Forest View, without merging into one bigger sanctuary.
Probably yes, with one caveat. ARA is built so most members don't have to be on it every day. The steward and treasurer keep the records. Members get email digests, can RSVP via link, and can vote on proposals via link without making an account. Where ARA pays off most is in the duct-tape that one or two coordinators are currently holding together alone.
No, but start small. The Seedling tier is free for up to five members and gives you the basic toolkit: one Garden, simple Library, one Rhythm. It's enough to test whether ARA fits your way of working before you commit. You can move up tiers as the community grows.
category

What does ARA do?

A walk through the eight areas inside a Sanctuary.

Eight main areas inside a Sanctuary, plus Mycelium on top for federation. Gardens (projects), Seeds (tasks), the Rhythm (chore rotations), the Council (proposals and consent voting), Gatherings (events with RSVPs), the Shed (shared tools and bookings), the Ledger (contributions and dues), the Library (versioned agreements and lore). The Tour walks through all of them.
A Rhythm is a recurring duty (cooking, cleaning, compost) with a list of people who take turns. ARA rotates the wheel weekly, monthly, or seasonally and sends each villager a notification when their week is up. If someone needs to swap, they swap inside the app. No group-chat negotiation, no hurt feelings about whose turn was missed.
Consent-based decision-making out of the box. Proposals get four vote options: Consent, Stand Aside, Abstain, Block. A reasoned Block pauses a proposal for another round rather than killing it, so the group has to actually hear the concern. The model is influenced by sociocracy. Full sociocratic governance (circles, driver statements, role elections) isn't a first-class feature yet. The full picture is in The Council.
Yes. The Shed holds shared resources: saws, vehicles, the canning kit, the projector. Each item is bookable by the hour or by the day, has a borrow log so you know who had it last, and keeps a running note for damage or wear so the next borrower isn't walking in blind.
The Ledger tracks every kind of contribution: hours worked, money put in, materials brought, care work given. Each villager sets their own hourly value, and the community decides what an hour pays back as. That could be credits, grain, thanks, or nothing at all. ARA tracks the contributions; the meaning is yours.
Gatherings handles every shared event: work parties, rituals, council meetings, potlucks. People RSVP, sign up for what they're bringing, comment on the event's Scroll, and export the whole thing to Google or Apple Calendar so ARA stays the one place it's planned, not the one place you have to keep checking.
today

Day to day

How ARA fits around the rest of community life.

No. ARA assumes that maybe one or two people in your community are the daily coordinators and the rest are not. Non-active members can get email digests of what's happening, RSVP to gatherings via link, and vote on proposals via link, all without making an account.
Yes. Each open proposal gets a unique link. A member opens the link, reads the proposal, picks Consent, Stand Aside, Abstain, or Block, optionally leaves a note, and that's it. The vote is recorded against their name without them having to remember a password.
Each Sanctuary can choose what gets digested and how often (weekly is the default). The digest lists what's open in the Council, what's coming up in the next gatherings, who's owed acknowledgment on the Ledger, and any active calls for help. It's an email, not a notification arms race.
Yes, on Hamlet (one connection) or Ecosystem (up to ten). Federation lets two sanctuaries see each other's open work parties, coordinate bulk buys, share resources between Sheds, and co-host gatherings, without becoming one bigger community.
help_outline

Common concerns

The objections people raise before they sign up.

You don't have to switch all at once. Most communities keep WhatsApp for chat and Google Docs for long-form writing, and bring ARA in for the things those tools don't track well: who's on chore duty this week, which proposals are still open, where the action items from last Thursday's meeting ended up, who borrowed the truck. ARA is the layer those tools were never built to hold.
Fair concern. It's why ARA isn't built around in-app chat or social feeds. The point isn't to move community life onto a screen. The point is that the meeting still happens in the common room, but the action items don't get lost on a paper that fell behind the fridge.
No. Loomio is excellent at what it does, and ARA's Council borrows from the same lineage. If your community is happy with Loomio for governance and only needs help with chores, gatherings, and resources, you can keep Loomio and use ARA for the rest. Many do.
Maybe not. If your community is genuinely happier with paper noticeboards and door-knocking, ARA isn't going to make it happier. ARA pays off when one or two people are quietly holding the coordination together and starting to burn out, and the cost of that work is becoming a community problem. If that doesn't describe you, it's fine to wait.
Tiers are flexible. Seedling fits five members, Village twenty-five, Hamlet fifty, and you can pay one euro per member per month above the included cap. If you outgrow your tier by a lot, the next one usually makes more sense than the per-seat fee. If you shrink, you can downgrade any time and your data comes with you.
You do. Personal data and sanctuary data can both be exported any time (JSON for personal, CSV for sanctuary content). If you cancel, the sanctuary goes dormant and all data stays readable and exportable. We don't sell data and we don't train models on it.
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Getting started

How to try ARA without committing to anything.

Three ways. Walk through the read-only demo of a fictional ecovillage (no signup). Read the story version at the Tour. Or sign up for the free Seedling tier and plant the first Seed in five minutes.
No. Seedling is free forever for up to five members, no card needed. The 30-day trials of Village, Hamlet, and Ecosystem also don't require a card. If you don't subscribe at the end of the trial, your Sanctuary auto-downgrades to Seedling without losing data.
About an hour for the basics: invite your stewards, name your first Garden, plant a few Seeds, set up one Rhythm, schedule a Gathering. Most communities then bring it up at a regular meeting and let people opt in over a few weeks. The point of ARA isn't to make a stressful migration. Let people come at their own pace.
Still curious

We didn't cover everything.

If your question isn't here, email us and a real person will write back. Or just open the demo and click around.

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