Institute Principles & Charter
Charter of the Institute
To serve is to repair.
Everything the Institute builds protects one thing: a person's presence in their own mind, body, and surroundings. The world is broken in specific, addressable ways, and building things which address those breakages is the work. These articles say what that obliges, in words anyone can read.
The Guiding Principles
Article I
To Repair, Not to Profit From
Service between equals, never charity from above.
Sage exists to help repair what's broken in the world. The person served stands level with the one serving, always.
Article II
You Hold the Direction
The tools keep what you bring them.
They don't steer, interpret, or nudge you. What you do with them is yours to decide.
Article III
No Reading You
It works only with what you choose to tell it.
Sage doesn't infer your mood or state from how you behave. Nothing watches between the lines.
Article IV
Your Data Is Never the Product
Nothing about you is sold, and nothing is turned against you.
Your information is used only to serve you, with your identity removed, or with your clear, opt-in permission. Every use will be listed in plain words, publicly, before any product handles data.
Article V
No Investors, by Design
What it earns goes to the work.
No venture capital, no investors to answer to. That is what lets Sage build for people instead of for clicks or profit taken at your expense.
Article VI
The People Who Earn Through Sage Come First
One channel, never a lock-in.
Merchants, couriers, and others who make a living through what Sage builds are never made to depend on it. Sage works toward supports that would outlast Sage itself.
Article VII
Sustained by Benefit, Not by Taking
Kept going by the good it produces.
Never by drawing down the people and communities it touches.
Article VIII
For Everyone
It supports your own direction; it never supplies one.
Sage is for any person, whatever they believe.
Article IX
Plain and Open
Clarity is part of the service, not a favor.
Sage says what it does in words anyone can understand, and its work is open to inspection where that matters.
Article X
Light by Design
As little energy and computing as it can, from the start.
Efficiency is a design value, never an afterthought.
Attestation
Built to stand guard over what is human.
This charter is public, held open to any reader, and governs every surface the Institute builds. It draws on the founding principles the Institute was established upon.
Record IP-Id-001 · Custodian Sage Institute, LLC · Revision July 2026