Research notes.
Short, sourced notes from the Foundation's research desk. Each note targets a single pan-African finding — citable, evergreen where possible, opinionated where appropriate. The frameworks are the canonical output; these are how we explain a finding as it lands.
Research
·Standards or vocabulary: what is the difference?
The register lists standards other people maintain that we adopt. The vocabulary lists words we had to publish ourselves because schema.org has none. How they differ, how they connect, and how to tell which one you need.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·How to see what we have built
Five public addresses you can open today with no account: the standards register, the vocabulary, the source repository, the published standards and a product that uses them, plus three commands to verify the register yourself.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·What we have set up: one register for the standards we build on
We keep one public register of the 78 external standards the Bundu, Mukoko and Nyuchi platform builds on, served from one address and pinned by hash. Here is what is built, what is only decided, and why we did it.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·Data for machine readers: a proposal to test a notation built for agents
JSON spends a large share of an agent's tokens on structure. A proposal to design and test a contract-first notation for machine readers and authors, as an open standard, with the kill criterion stated before the work begins.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·The language harness: a programming language that describes itself to agents
In Mzizi, every feature registers in the language harness, so the whole language can be printed as one document an agent reads. Why we made it part of the build, and what is enforced.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·Exact or guess: compiler fixes that never change what a program means
Mzizi's compiler tags every suggested fix as exact or guess, and applies exact fixes automatically. The rule behind the tag, and the review that caught us breaking it.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·M1: Mzizi's core language is complete, and what that does not mean
Mzizi v0.8.0 completes M1: every Tier 1 row of the language tracker is done. What a Mzizi program can do today, how we decided C6 was done, and what M1 deliberately does not claim.
By Bryan Fawcett
Research
·FeaturedIntroducing Mzizi: an open architecture framework
Mzizi is an open architecture framework — opinionated about how you build infrastructure, agnostic about what you build with. A 3D + 2 node model, an MCP, a registry, a build toolchain, and a custom resilience layer that no rendering framework ships with.
By Bryan Fawcett