ICN is open infrastructure. There are four concrete ways to engage — building the codebase, contributing non-technically, bringing an institutional use case, or supporting the work financially. Each path below tells you what the first step is, not where to start guessing.
Rust workspace, actor-based runtime, strict kernel/app separation. If you write systems code and want to work on cooperative infrastructure that is not another SaaS or token protocol, this is the path.
icn/rust-toolchain.toml.git clone https://github.com/InterCooperative-Network/icn.git
cd icn/icn
cargo build
cargo test --workspace --lib
The Rust workspace lives inside the icn/ subdirectory, not at the repo root.
Run all cargo commands from there.
README.md — repo map and first-stop routing for contributors.docs/GETTING_STARTED.md — build, run, and verification quickstart.AGENTS.md — operating rules, verification commands, invariants, crate layout.CONTRIBUTING.md — architectural guardrails and the regulatory invariants PR checklist.CLAUDE.md — deep project map (also useful even if you aren't using Claude Code).epic:* label and one type:* label. Pick an epic that matches your interest.
docs/onboarding/README.md.
cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspace --lib
Run these from icn/, the Rust workspace you entered in the build step. Full routing table is in AGENTS.md.
Work on a feature branch (feat/<slug>, fix/<slug>,
docs/<slug>). Open a PR against main. Every PR includes a
what, why, risk, and test plan.
If the change touches gateway APIs, ledger logic, or member-facing text, step through the regulatory
invariants checklist in CONTRIBUTING.md.
ICN is not only a Rust project. The substrate has to be described, designed, stress-tested, and translated into something cooperatives can actually use. The work below is real and needed.
Writing that explains what the system actually does without overclaiming. Gaps we know about: user-facing guides for non-developer members, step-by-step operator guides, explainers that keep What's Real Now honest as the surface changes.
First step: read docs/INDEX.md, find a gap, open a
docs issue
with type:doc.
The member-facing experience is the part of the system most visibly trailing the substrate underneath. Design work on how identity, standing, governance, and receipts cohere into something a person can use is wanted and has room.
First step: read docs/design-language/brief-v0.md and
start a discussion
describing what you would want to work on.
Cooperative governance patterns, policy mechanisms, economic accounting rules, regulatory framing. ICN is shaped by how real institutions actually run; we need people who know that terrain to push back on designs that won't survive contact with a real membership.
First step: open a GitHub Discussion under Ideas or General with the question or proposal.
Running the daemon, running through the flows, filing specific bugs, and telling us where the experience breaks down. Adversarial reading of the public site and docs is valuable — inconsistency between What's Real Now and the rest of the site is a defect.
First step: Getting Started to stand up a node, then open an issue for anything that breaks, misleads, or surprises.
Connecting ICN to the cooperative, solidarity-economy, and public-interest-technology networks that should know about it. Introductions to aligned projects and institutions. Organizing conversations about cooperative infrastructure that don't route through platform incumbents.
First step: join the ICN Discord server or post in Discussions.
Cooperative movements are not Anglophone. The public site, docs, and concept glossary will need to be readable across at least the languages where active cooperative infrastructure communities already exist. This work has not started and is open.
First step: open a Discussion describing the target language and which surface (site, docs, glossary) you want to cover first.
If your cooperative, network, or aligned project is thinking about ICN as institutional infrastructure, the honest frame is not "vendor selection." It is early collaboration on a substrate that is still being built.
Read For Cooperatives and What's Real Now. Watch the repository on GitHub. This is the right relationship for most cooperatives right now — you stay oriented without investing engineering capacity in something that isn't ready to hold your institution yet.
Governance patterns that work, accounting rules that don't fit generic tools, federation relationships that current software can't carry — this knowledge shapes the substrate. You don't need to write code to do this. Open a Discussion describing what your institution does and where the current stack fails.
If your institution has the capacity and the interest, working with the project directly as a cooperative or federation willing to shape how the substrate gets built is an option. This is engineering-heavy. You are helping build it, not buying it finished.
There is no formal pilot-application process yet. The current path is: open a Discussion describing your institution, the scope of engagement you have in mind, and the engineering capacity you can commit.
What we'd ask you not to do: treat ICN as a SaaS product to pilot next quarter. That is not where the work stands today. What honest adoption looks like.
ICN is open infrastructure. Financial support goes to sustaining engineering capacity on the substrate — not to a commercial product with an investor ladder behind it.
The current financial-support rail is GitHub Sponsors, at the organization level. Sponsorship goes to sustaining work across the whole project, not to a specific sub-project or individual.
This is the only live donation rail today. We are not running Patreon, Open Collective, or a fiscal-sponsor donation portal. If a more structured funding path (fiscal sponsor, grants, institutional membership) becomes appropriate, it will be described on this page when it exists — not before.
Sponsor on GitHub ↗Developer work that expands execution coverage, improves contributor onboarding, or tightens member-facing and operator-facing surfaces.
Documentation work that makes the project easier to evaluate honestly and easier to contribute to without internal context.
Design, testing, and pilot feedback that exposes where the current user-facing surfaces still break down.
Institutional input from cooperatives, federations, and aligned networks about governance, accounting, and coordination problems the current stack fails to carry.
A polished non-technical onboarding flow for ordinary members, a formal pilot intake program, or a managed vendor-style adoption path.
Additional donation infrastructure beyond GitHub Sponsors.
A finished brand system or final ICN logo.
Any hosted sign-up surface that would let institutions treat ICN like a normal SaaS product.
If you are still figuring out what ICN is before deciding how to engage, start with What is ICN and What's Real Now. Then come back here.