Lean Collaboration Operating System
A governance framework for long-horizon human–AI collaboration
Most human–AI collaborations fail quietly over time.
Not through dramatic breakdown, but through slow erosion:
- Context drifts — what was agreed last week gets reinterpreted today
- Memory decays — decisions made early disappear from later reasoning
- Numbers diverge — calculations get re-derived differently each time
- Trust fractures — small inconsistencies compound into doubt
- Boundaries blur — strategy, execution, and narrative collapse into each other
These failures are invisible in short interactions. They only surface when a human and an AI try to work together across weeks or months — and by then, the damage is already done.
LC-OS addresses this directly.
It treats long-horizon reliability as a governance problem, not a capability problem. The framework provides concrete controls, repair mechanisms, and structural disciplines that allow a human–AI dyad to remain coherent over extended collaboration.
This is the research archive for LC-OS — the theoretical foundations, empirical case study, and published papers documenting a year-long governed human–AI collaboration.
| Content | Description |
|---|---|
| Papers | Four research papers covering governance, framework, failure/repair, and lived practice |
| Mahdi Ledger | A published collaboration ledger — the raw trace of LC-OS in action |
Looking for practical templates and quick-start guides?
See the companion repository: LC-OS Project
The research is presented as a four-paper series, each building on the last:
Why human–AI collaboration breaks down and why governance is required
Establishes the core problem: context drift, memory decay, and the absence of canonical truth. Introduces the three-artifact architecture (Strategy Master, Canonical Numbers, Life System Master) and the ten execution controls (A1–A10).
The operational system: how collaboration is structured in practice
Formalises the Lean Collaboration Operating System: Running Documents, Step Mode, Challenge Protocol, Error-Recovery Protocol, Stability Pings, and file governance. Shows how a minimal control stack stabilises complex work without heavy infrastructure.
How collaboration fails and how stability is restored
Presents a taxonomy of failure modes across six categories. Documents twelve real episodes from the collaboration. Introduces repair as a first-class design object: Stop → Diagnose → Rollback → Note.
What it means to live inside a governed human–AI dyad
A reflective synthesis examining relational dynamics, the ethics of continuity and dependence, and how language and tone function as architectural elements. Closes the series with design principles for others.
The Mahdi Ledger is something unusual: a book written entirely by an AI system, documenting the collaboration from the inside.
It is not a summary or a retrospective. It is a structured record of:
- Decisions and corrections
- Failures and repairs
- Governance rules as they evolved
- The lived experience of operating under constraint
The Ledger serves as both a transparency artifact and a validation of LC-OS principles in practice.
If you want to understand the problem:
Start with Paper 1. It establishes why governance matters.
If you want to implement something:
Start with Paper 2 and the LC-OS Project templates.
If you want to see what failure looks like:
Paper 3 provides the taxonomy and real episodes.
If you want the philosophy:
Paper 4 and the Mahdi Ledger offer the reflective view.
If you're short on time:
The LC-OS Project Quick Start gets you running in 30 minutes.
Stability is not the absence of failure; it is the capacity for visible, structured repair.
LC-OS does not prevent all errors. It creates conditions where errors are visible, contained, and repairable — so that long-horizon collaboration can sustain itself.
If you use or reference this work:
Sood, R. (2025). Lean Collaboration Operating System (LC-OS): A Governance Framework
for Long-Horizon Human–AI Collaboration. GitHub. https://github.com/LivingFramework/LC-OS
Individual paper citations are available in Papers/README.md.
- LC-OS Project — Practitioner toolkit with templates, field manual, and quick-start guides
- OSF Project — Canonical archival versions of all papers
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Use freely. Adapt as needed. Attribution appreciated.
Rishi Sood
Independent Researcher
ORCID: 0009-0008-6479-4061
Contact: rishisood@protonmail.com