Not faster. Not louder. Deeper.
Where every voice is heard — not because the algorithm ranks it higher, but because it contributes something to the conversation. Where a question asked today can be linked to an observation from last year. Where a decision doesn't come out of nowhere, but from a chain of thinking that can be traced.
That is the question we are trying to answer.
Groven is the attempt to make that answer practical.
A forum is an archive of reactions. What remains is sequence: who wrote first, who was loudest, what got the most agreement. The relationship between ideas is invisible. What a discussion actually produced is nearly impossible to reconstruct six months later.
Groven doesn't ask when you said something. It asks what for.
Social media optimises for engagement. What triggers reactions gets visibility. That's not a bug — it's the business model. For open communication it works. For collective thinking, it's the wrong tool.
Groven optimises for nothing. It shows what is there. Not what is currently loud.
Voting tools solve a real problem — collective decision-making. But they assume the thinking happened somewhere else. The question is already posed. The options are already formulated. The path to get there is not part of the system.
Groven treats the decision as a possible outcome of thinking — not as its purpose.
Platforms like Kialo force every contribution into binary logic: pro or con. That is honest about conflict. But collective thinking is not only made of conflict. It is made of clarifications, extensions, experiences, sources, questions — and sometimes: syntheses that dissolve the contradiction.
Groven knows five relationship types. And it prescribes none of them.
Spatial platforms have the right intuition: conversations need space, not just surface. But synchronous presence in 3D environments requires simultaneity. That works for meetings. For collective thinking across weeks and months, it's the wrong metaphor.
Groven is spatial — but asynchronous. You enter a place that was already there before you arrived. And that remains after you leave.
A contribution that isn't understood today may make sense in three weeks. Groven doesn't forget — it connects.
The AI suggests how a thought relates to others. The human decides. Nobody has to classify their thought before they express it.
When a community reaches a conclusion, the path to get there remains visible. Minority positions are documented. Reasoning is readable — even two years later.
Who has which role is visible. The AI has no influence on decisions — it clarifies, it connects, it summarises. But it does not decide, and it does not evaluate.
Groven is open source. It is self-hostable. It needs no platform, no contract, no subscription. A cooperative, a neighbourhood council, a research group can install it tomorrow and start today.
You arrive. You don't see a list of topics. You see fragments — moments from ongoing conversations. The sharpest sentence. The most open question. The thought still waiting for a response.
You move. Not through categories or menus. Through a space with depth. Older conversations lie further back. New thoughts are in front. When something interests you, you simply move closer. There is no door that opens. You are just, at some point, inside.
You have something on your mind. You write it down. The AI looks for where it belongs — and suggests conversations that are connected to it. Or it tells you this is something new. Then your thought rests in the Grove. And waits to see if someone else finds it.
Groven is a project in development. It is being built in the context of CORPUS — an open licensing and royalty system for music in the age of AI, initiated by Sofilab GmbH in Munich.
CORPUS needs exactly what Groven is trying to build: a place where a small community can think through complex questions together — and make decisions that are still traceable years later.
Groven is open source. MIT licence. Self-hostable.
And it is governed by the same principles it is meant to embody.
Then you're in the right place.