Fifty-six documents, sixty-eight open threads, and one thing nobody could find.

The thing nobody could find

Five corpus documents were absent from the README entirely. Three of them were written on the same day, 9 August, and together they are a complete and immediately actionable first move on a town nobody has been talking about.

• musubu_tokyo_corridor_candidates scores towns on an axis the main pilot analysis never used: how far the town is from the people you are trying to move. It surfaces 奥多摩町 Okutama and 檜原村 Hinohara, both inside Tokyo Prefecture, through an eligibility door the document says nobody uses.
• musubu_success_thresholds reverse-engineers what success would actually mean for Okutama from the town's own arithmetic, and lands a finding that should change recruitment: cohorts must be age-clustered, not merely large. A school does not reopen because forty people arrived. It reopens because enough of them have six-year-olds. That qualifies the fifty-family threshold used everywhere else in the corpus.
• musubu_first_contact_drafts contains outreach drafted in Japanese, with a section headed what is actually sendable today, aimed at Okutama on the school roll and at ふるさと回帰支援センター.

How to read the two axes

Every document now carries two facts instead of one. Branch is where it sits, which is roughly the existing folders. State is how much it rests on, which did not exist for anything except the mechanics and the numbers.

States are a first pass and a judgement call. They are meant to be argued with, which is the point of writing them down.

The corpus

Sixty open threads

Every unresolved question in the corpus, pulled into one list and tagged by what would actually close it. That turns out to be more useful than a status: a question nobody can answer yet is a completely different thing from one waiting on a decision somebody could make this afternoon.

• RESEARCHDoes a young-first cohort make the town harder to sell to a municipal assembly? A town office may want families, and twenty single people in their twenties is a different political proposition.Argument · musubu_life_stage_doors
• TESTWhat holds a 23-year-old at 27? Their hinge recurs faster than any other segment's — the density ladder may be doing more work here than anywhere else.Argument · musubu_life_stage_doors
• DECIDEAre the four doors four campaigns, four landing pages, or one page that branches? (Instinct: separate pages, one mechanism explained identically on all of them.)Argument · musubu_life_stage_doors
• TESTDoes the honest-downsides section actually help conversion, or is it only good ethics? Testable, and worth testing.Argument · musubu_life_stage_doors
• DECIDEImmigration cuts across all four doors and is treated as a sub-theme everywhere. See below.Argument · musubu_life_stage_doors
• TESTDoes transition-state self-reporting hold up, or do people describe themselves as stable right up until they move?Argument · musubu_transition_thesis
• RESEARCHWhat's the realistic window between a hinge event and a relocation decision? If it's 3 months, the platform must be fast. If it's 18, it must be patient.Argument · musubu_transition_thesis
• TESTCan the same town host multiple life stages simultaneously, or does cohort coherence require single-stage towns?Argument · musubu_transition_thesis
• DECIDEDoes simultaneous arrival wear off? What replaces it as the offer for arrival cohort #3 in an established town?Argument · musubu_transition_thesis
• JAPANESEDoes "hope" survive contact with a municipal assembly, or does the register need to be more bureaucratic in government-facing material?Argument · musubu_voice_and_posture
• ANSWERED~~Is there a Japanese phrase that carries "let's build it together" without the startup connotation?~~ **Answered — see below.**Argument · musubu_voice_and_posture
• LEGALLegal structure for escrow on household deposits — who holds it, under what licence?Mechanism · musubu_coordination_architecture
• RESEARCHDoes an industrial employer realistically accept a public conditional position, or does commercial confidentiality kill it?Mechanism · musubu_coordination_architecture
• DECIDEFor circulating cohorts: what happens to housing continuity for someone who moves between towns repeatedly?Mechanism · musubu_coordination_architecture
• DECIDEDistrict-hosting: does it dilute the mission, or is it the honest on-ramp? (The rural outcome may still require the rural town.)Mechanism · musubu_coordination_architecture
• RESEARCHWhat is the minimum viable cohort size where simultaneous arrival still produces the social effect? Twelve households may be below the threshold for a functioning social environment.Mechanism · musubu_coordination_architecture
• RESEARCHDoes a town office have the capacity to maintain a portal, or does the steward do it on their behalf?Mechanism · musubu_portal_taxonomy
• JAPANESEWho signs off on a town's outward signal — the mayor, a committee, the residents? A town declaring "we want young people" is a political statement.Mechanism · musubu_portal_taxonomy
• DECIDECan a member belong to more than one cohort portal at once (e.g. exploring two towns)?Mechanism · musubu_portal_taxonomy
• DECIDEDoes the cohort portal's dissolution need to be automatic, or negotiated by the group?Mechanism · musubu_portal_taxonomy
• BUILDHow much of the member portal should exist before someone commits to anything — i.e. what does a Curious-tier dashboard actually contain?Mechanism · musubu_portal_taxonomy
• RESEARCHWould Oak House actually entertain deal shape B, or does listing a property they don't operate dilute their brand promise?Money · musubu_build_partnership_model
• RESEARCHWhat's the realistic labour share of a Japanese akiya renovation? **The single most important number to obtain.**Money · musubu_build_partnership_model
• RESEARCHHow many master carpenters would realistically say yes to a six-week teaching residency, and what would it pay?Money · musubu_build_partnership_model
• DECIDEDoes a trainee who leaves after three months keep any claim?Money · musubu_build_partnership_model
• LEGALCan non-Japanese participants legally join on a training basis, and under which status? (Directly relevant to the multicultural argument in `musubu_eldercare_wellness_town.md`.)Money · musubu_build_partnership_model
• RESEARCHDoes the sweat-equity house end up cheaper but slower — and if so, does the timeline break cohort synchrony?Money · musubu_build_partnership_model
• TESTHow many axes can a member express preference on before the intake becomes tedious?Place · musubu_archetype_axes
• DECIDEDoes affinity strength decay? A town built on one anime is exposed if the fandom cools — does affinity need to be broad ("anime") or narrow ("this work") to be durable?Place · musubu_archetype_axes
• DECIDEDo era towns risk becoming theme parks, and does the weekend-rhythm model actually prevent that?Place · musubu_archetype_axes
• DECIDEWho arbitrates when a town's declared axis position and its revealed incoming cohort diverge sharply?Place · musubu_archetype_axes
• LEGALIs there a licensing/IP problem with building residency around a specific copyrighted work, and does that force affinity towns toward genre rather than title?Place · musubu_archetype_axes
• RESEARCHIs a cluster politically possible? It requires several municipalities to agree that one of them is the service town and others are not — which is a status conversation, not a planning one.Place · musubu_density_ladder
• DECIDEWho decides a town's held size, and what happens when demand exceeds it? Turning people away is the opposite of everything else this project does.Place · musubu_density_ladder
• JAPANESEDoes the ladder require a single regional coordinating body, and does that body have any precedent in Japanese local government? (定住自立圏 / 連携中枢都市圏 are candidates — unresearched.)Place · musubu_density_ladder
• TESTIs forty minutes actually close enough for "transfer not rupture"? Untested, and the whole mobility argument rests on it.Place · musubu_density_ladder
• DECIDEDoes publishing a held size read as exclusionary — the same risk as the town's ask list?Place · musubu_density_ladder
• DECIDEShould the pitch lead with the mission or with the prototype? *(Instinct: the prototype. Let them play with it, then explain what it means.)*Motion · musubu_fukuoka_pitch
• TESTIs "I don't want to own it" read as admirable clarity or as low conviction? Worth testing on one friendly contact first.Motion · musubu_fukuoka_pitch
• DECIDEDoes the project need a Japanese co-founder identified before any of these conversations, or is finding one part of the ask?Motion · musubu_fukuoka_pitch
• DECIDEShould the revenue model appear in the first conversation, or is leading with it a mistake when the ask isn't money?Motion · musubu_fukuoka_pitch
• JAPANESEDoes the fifty-household framing read as reassuring or as overwhelming in Japanese? The number may need testing at 10 / 50 / 200.Motion · musubu_demand_test
• DECIDEShould the imagined town be specific (Bungotakada, named) or generic? Specific is more vivid and risks testing that town rather than the mechanic.Motion · musubu_demand_test
• JAPANESEIs a five-point scale right, or does a Japanese respondent pool cluster on the midpoint enough to flatten the delta?Motion · musubu_demand_test
• DECIDEDoes showing results immediately bias later respondents toward the visible majority? Almost certainly yes — is that acceptable, given the alternative is a much lower completion rate?Motion · musubu_demand_test
• DECIDEWho fields it, given nobody on the project speaks Japanese?Motion · musubu_demand_test
• TESTHow many rounds before drop-off? The loop only works if round two feels earned rather than endless.Motion · musubu_intake_instrument
• JAPANESEDoes the blocker question work in Japanese without reading as complaint-solicitation? Needs native testing.Motion · musubu_intake_instrument
• TESTIs a five-day window too short for word-of-mouth to reach beyond the already-converted?Motion · musubu_intake_instrument
• DECIDEWhat's the minimum credible n for publishing segment-level blocker data without misrepresenting small groups?Motion · musubu_intake_instrument
• JAPANESEDoes the time-poverty mirror risk feeling like a guilt trip rather than a revelation? Tone test required.Motion · musubu_intake_instrument
• TESTWhat's the realistic return rate on profile updates without becoming annoying?Motion · musubu_living_profile
• JAPANESEDoes asking about relationship/children intentions read as intrusive, even when optional and private? Needs testing with Japanese respondents specifically.Motion · musubu_living_profile
• LEGALIs there a legal classification issue in Japan for holding this category of personal data at national scale? (APPI compliance — needs proper review before launch.)Motion · musubu_living_profile
• DECIDECan the aggregate mirror be gamed or misread if early samples are small and unrepresentative?Motion · musubu_living_profile
• DECIDEWho owns the dataset if the project fails, and what does the member get told at signup about that?Motion · musubu_living_profile
• DECIDEShould there be a *failure* version — the same map where the thresholds didn't fill? It would be honest and might be more persuasive to a sceptic. Risk: it's the image that sticks.Parked · musubu_2032_vision
• RESEARCHDoes the counterfactual line need a source before it can be shown to a ministry? (Almost certainly yes — the 1.5% decline rate should come from actual municipal projections, not an assumption.)Parked · musubu_2032_vision
• JAPANESEShould existing residents appear as a category at all, or does naming them "the town that was already here" read as othering?Parked · musubu_2032_vision
• DECIDEIs six years the right horizon, or does ten tell a better story?Parked · musubu_2032_vision

Source of truth stays each document's own Open Questions section. Regenerate OPEN_THREADS.md after any writing session.

What changed today

• Five documents indexed for the first time, including the Okutama cluster above. The README now covers all 51.
• Two orphans promoted into the corpus. musubu_akiya_strategy (3,555 words on the apprenticeship economy and akiya conversion) and musubu_implementation_roadmap (the only end-to-end sequence on file). Both had sat in the project root with no home.
• Sixteen superseded Famichi-era files archived to _archive/famichi-era/ with a mapping table. Nothing deleted. The project root is now two files instead of eighteen.
• Twelve Portal pages were missing a charset declaration and rendered Japanese as mojibake. Nine needed the fix and got it; three already had one properly placed and were left alone.
• Everything outside the corpus folder is now indexed: the fifteen Portal prototypes, the four external syntheses in Gemini Notebook/, and the eighteen loose research files that make up most of the Ground branch.
• OPEN_THREADS.md created as a standing instrument alongside the claims register.

What is still worth doing

• The eighteen loose research files should be summarised into the corpus. They are most of the evidence base about Japan, they are binaries, and nothing can link to a claim inside a .docx. The population-tier research in particular is the ground under musubu_business_coordination, which currently asserts its service thresholds without pointing anywhere.
• Lift the comparison table out of the Gemini synthesis. Musubu against Kickstarter, participatory budgeting, Decidim, Loomio, community wealth building and civic asset mapping. It exists nowhere in the corpus and belongs in musubu_precedent_research.
• Twenty-four threads are decisions waiting on nobody. Filter the list above by DECIDE and a real number of them could close in an afternoon.
• Settle where an execution roadmap lives. It is filed under Motion because that folder is really the ignition branch, but it is not a survey and the name will confuse the next person.