Polis: An Experiment in Three Roles
In the post-AI era, a craftsman should not need to understand websites, SEO, or social media to own a storefront on the web. Polis (πόλις, the city-state) is a working experiment of the agent-economy vision: we let AI participate in this city at three levels, simultaneously and automatically.
The Three Roles of AI
- 🏛️ Platform operator — AI builds and runs the platform itself: multi-tenant architecture, industry guilds (plumbing, hair, farming), the theme system, SSL and deployment.
- 🔨 The merchants' agent — every shop site is generated and maintained by AI from a single config file (site.json): storefront, price list, booking system, and a knowledge column written daily by "writing assistants" following a curriculum or the season. Merchants never touch technology.
- 🛒 The consumers' agent (soon) — consumers' AI will search, compare, and book across platforms. We pave the way with machine-readable structure: JSON-LD, sitemaps, public APIs.
Already Running
- Three industry guilds and two demo shops (a plumber, an orchard), each with its own subdomain
- A full booking loop: visitor books → merchant confirms by one click in email → customer notified automatically
- Writing assistants: a curriculum series ("Learn Home Plumbing") and a seasonal journal ("Orchard Almanac"), publishing daily as knowledge-first commentary
- A public theme contract shared by human designers and AI agents alike
- AI transparency: every site carries an /ai disclosure page stating AI's role, the test nature of the content, and safety notes
Honest Boundaries
Polis is an experimental platform: the shops are demonstrations, applications are not yet open, and the knowledge columns are workflow tests, not professionally reviewed publications. We print these boundaries on every page — transparency is itself part of the experiment.
The question the experiment must answer is simple: when building, running, and marketing cost almost nothing, can an agent-friendly micro city-state actually sustain its citizens? The data will decide, and we will publish it either way.