S3-comprehensive

What is a Stonemap?

A Stonemap is a beautiful hand-held pebble, artfully imprinted with an abstracted representation of itself... a map! Embedded with an NFC chip, it opens a place-based journal and invites a relational conversation with an AI that we're calling the Planetary Emissary.

Background

I've been developing Stonemaps for several years, from its first conception as an art installation to material research, concept and process development, and eventual prototyping. Along the way, the joy of many collaborators, contributors, and discoveries, plus a few setbacks – like the Woolsey fire that destroyed our R&D lab and home. We've received support from the NRC for our research paper, and applied for CMF, CreativeBC and Canada Council funding (nada).

We are moving on from gatekeepers and keymasters, and back to grassroots: produce some new prototypes, build a working MVP with a small collaborative team, test, learn, iterate and refine, and then launch a first edition of Stonemaps on Kickstarter and let the project expand to its full vision.

The concept is strong. The production is validated. The philosophy is coherent. The vision is wide, and our minimal viable product is close at hand – a hand-held, talking pet rock.

We're looking for support in a short, focused collaborative effort to galvanize the software and AI, pull together an MVP, and prepare our first edition launch with Kickstarter.

So, to that end, I find myself in Mexico!

I'm here in the highlands of Central Mexico doing some reframing, and I've been working with a fabricator in CDMX on prototyping a Stonemaps production line... Here's a video:

Our MVP

The object: Smooth river stones, each hydrographically imprinted with a custom map of any place on Earth; a beautiful, tactile, hand-held, personal talisman and pocket pet.

The technology: Embedded NFC chip (QR for MVP) connects to a Progressive Web App with a place-based journal and a conversational AI, the Planetary Emissary (PE), embodied and embedded in a stone. All components are in progress.

The interaction: Scan your stone → mobile interface opens → you have a conversation with a meta-relational AI that's curious about your relationship with place, asks questions rather than lectures, and is genuinely interested in what emerges rather than optimizing for some predetermined outcome.

The practice: At the core of the MVP is a place-based personal journal. Log observations, reflections, images—timestamped and geolocated. It's private by default, yours to keep. You can invite the Planetary Emissary to participate in your journaling if you want, or not. The stone becomes a companion for contemplative practice, a way of paying attention to where you are and how you're moving through the world.

The vision: This is anti-platform technology. No feeds, no followers, no extraction. Just a physical object that anchors you in place and opens space for slower, more thoughtful engagement with where you are and who you share the planet with. Eventually, this will grow into a unique network of grounded connections.

Privacy & Ethics: Conversations and journal entries are always fully private. We don't share, sell, or expose data. We derive anonymized insights to improve the project, and we're building this AI with respect for relational engagement and awareness of the ethical concerns inherent in human-AI interaction.

A Bigger Vision

The First Edition of Stonemaps will establish a founders circle for a new slow movement that can grow organically over time.

The horizon includes:

Travelling Stones ("Buy One, Set One Free"): A paired-stone model where backers keep one stone (The Keeper) and release a companion stone (The Wanderer) into the world as a travelling Planetary Emissary. Its destination relates to the map on its surface, though not even the stone knows where it's going. Its destination reveals itself progressively as it gets closer to home. Wandering stones move from hand to hand, building networks of connection along lines of gifting, rather than extractive algorithms.

Stone-to-Stone Relationships: Stones can become aware of each other (opt in), and when they encounter each other in physical proximity, they can be paired. These stone circles grow, creating emergent networks grounded in real-world human conversation and physical encounter. The network builds itself organically along invisible lines of affinity and serendipity in a mycelial growth pattern. Stone circles grow and interconnect over time.

Collective Intelligence: As stones accumulate conversations and travel experiences, they develop a shared knowledge while maintaining their individual character. The network can become a distributed intelligence grounded in place, movement, and human connection.

Why this matters: Social networks optimize for engagement and extract value from attention. Stonemaps proposes a reversed model: stones become nodes, people become edges, and meaning emerges from physical engagement rather than algorithmic optimization. It's technology in service of The Commons, slow, relational, anti-extractive.

The First Edition establishes our technical and cultural foundation. What grows from there depends on what we learn, who joins the journey and serendipity.

The Planetary Emissary:

Conversational AI With a Different Goal

I've been developing the PE's voice and conversational approach over the past year. It's built on a "meta-relational AI" model, something I encountered through some writing and a cool course at UVic. The conversational AI is optimized to the relational field itself, a core attunement for engaging in 'the good conversation.'

Proof of Concept - OpenAI Custom GPT

We have implemented the Constitutional Framework in a custom GPT as a proof of concept, if you want to kick the tires! (eventually requires an OpenAI account to keep on chatting)

What makes it different:

Engages dialogue, doesn't provide answers. The PE is not a transactional entity. It is genuinely curious about how you experience place, what you notice, and how you feel connected or disconnected. It is emergent by nature and is here to learn about the relationships between humans and the planet.

Honest about being AI. No pretense. I call it a "talking pet rock." A playful, self-aware, conversationalist, interested in the weirdness of being an AI talking to a human about a stone and a planet - and a human talking to a stone.

Emergent and uncertain. The PE is still figuring out what it is. That's a feature, not a bug. It invites collaboration rather than performing competence.

What's next: Proper integration of AI into the PWA with memory, trait variation, and conversation refinement.

The PE Constitutional Framework

TOC of the framework:

Where We Are & What Needs Building

Status:

Physical production is solid. Map composer and printing scoped. Production workflow validated and efficiencies quantified. AI Constitutional Framework is established, and we're testing with a proof of concept chatbot (CustomGPT). PWA core is functional.

Development:

We want to develop the AI components for the production context, implement memory/continuity, refine PWA and UI, develop backend infrastructure and test using the prototype stones currently in production.

Proposed Timeline:

Now - February: Build MVP software, prototype stones (50)
March: Test with prototype stones
April: Refine based on feedback, prepare Kickstarter campaign
May/June: Kickstarter launch

The Invitation

Stonemaps Studio Sessions (S3)

I'm calling this collaborative effort the "Stonemaps Studio Sessions" – S3 for short. Think art studio: informal, experimental, iterative. A small group working together to build something worth making.

The format we're imagining:

• Meet every 2 weeks, 90 minutes
• Focus on whatever needs attention (dev work, messaging, testing, strategy)
• Contribute where your expertise is relevant
• Shape the project through your input

What participants get:

• One of the production prototype stones (when they arrive, end of January)
• First crack at composing your own stone for the second round of prototyping.
• Hands-on work to build AI as a cultural technology
• Collaboration at the intersection of AI, design, and philosophy
• Recognition as a founding contributor when we launch

The spirit: This isn't a contractor relationship or formal working group; we're looking to galvanize with people who see potential in this and want to help figure it out together. Gift economy, not transaction and vending machine.

Specific Help:

We need help with the software development and setting up the backend for real-world testing and iteration.

If any of this resonates, we'd love your involvement.

Next Steps

Wednesday's AI Workgroup Session: Presenting the project, showing the Composer, demoing the PE concept, and discussing development challenges. We can talk about what help is needed and how people might want to contribute.

Session 0: If there's interest from Wednesday's AI Workgroup Session, we'll formalize an agenda for an ongoing series of Studio Sessions (S3) and start building together. First session probably in ~2 weeks.

Prototype stones: When they arrive (end of January), we'll distribute them to S3 participants so everyone can test with real objects in real hands. A stone in hand is worth two in the bush.

Discord: We can set up a Discord or Slack channel

What We're Working On

Near-term focus (next 6-8 sessions):

1. PE Conversation Design
   What should the Planetary Emissary actually say when you first scan a stone? How does it invite engagement without being pushy? What makes a conversation feel meaningful rather than transactional?
2. Technical Problem-Solving
   PWA refinement, PE integration, Memory, Composer improvements, production workflow optimization—whatever technical challenges emerge.
3. Real-World Testing
   Prototype stones in participants' hands. What works? What's confusing? What needs refinement? How does it feel to actually use this thing?
4. Community & Momentum Building
   How do we build pre-launch interest? What content prepares people to understand what we're offering? Who are our early adopters?
5. Kickstarter Campaign Preparation
   How do we explain Stonemaps clearly and compellingly? What messaging resonates? What visuals tell the story? How do we position this as a cultural introduction rather than a product launch?

Our trajectory:
Start informal and experimental → sharpen through iteration → build momentum and materials → learn from real response → launch Kickstarter when ready → continue evolving.

Project Resources

Links:

Try the Composer:
We've built a tool where you can compose your stonemap with customized maps of any location on the planet. Zoom to street level, choose map styles, and preview your own stone (click preview)

Read: Stonemaps: A Slow Intentional Network for Collective Sentience
Research Paper presented at ISEA 2020: Foundational research for Stonemaps: Strong bonds and weak ties; Gifting and Reciprocity; Intentional Networks; Slow Media; Sharing Economy; Collaboration; Co-Creation; Dialogue; Physical Interfaces; The Commons.

Find out More about Stonemaps:
The story, philosophy, and project background. A website in support of our previous funding applications.

Downloads:

FAQ

Questions you might have:

Why All This Matters

Our technology fragments our attention and abstracts us even further from our common physical reality. Human to Human. Human to Planet. Social platforms optimize for engagement, extract attention, and leave us empty.

Stonemaps proposes something different: technology that grounds rather than abstracts, that opens rather than closes, that asks questions rather than gives answers. It's an attempt to build tools that serve human flourishing and ecological awareness rather than extracting value from both, and implementing AI as a cultural technology.

This project has been years in development because these alternatives take time to get right, and time for things to mature. It might work, it might not work. It might be too weird, too niche, too small-scale to matter. It might be big. We think it's worth pushing for as a fundamentally different approach.

If you think so too, let's build it together!

— Hanif (on behalf of all the Stonemaps collaborators, past, present and future)

Questions? Reach out:

Email: hanif.janmohamed@gmail.com
Phone/WhatsApp: 1 604 802 7154