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The Human-Shaped Principles

I want anyone to be able to say "my software is human-shaped" and have it mean something about how that software was made, not just about what its builder hoped it would be. So, these principles are guidelines for making and shipping. Each one is something you can actually do, and something another person can check, whether this is your first app or your fiftieth, and whether or not you have ever worked with an AI agent.

Version 0.6, by Ben Wilkoff, and open to argument.

Human-shaped software:

  1. 1Starts from a human-shaped problem, one that affects real people in the real world.
  2. 2Increases what people are able to do, rather than how much profit can be made from them.
  3. 3Has its values written down as guardrails for both the people and the AI agents who build it.
  4. 4Treats iteration as the path to innovation, so that no first draft of a feature, design, or piece of writing is ever shipped.
  5. 5Is grounded in research, so that its builder always knows whose work they are building on, from tools and services to authors and design patterns.
  6. 6Makes every decision with feedback from another person, an AI agent, or a piece of documentation.
  7. 7Is tested the way people will actually see, hear, and use it, not only the way a machine would check it.
  8. 8Treats documentation as seriously as code, so that it grows and changes with the software, in the builder's own language.
  9. 9Shares its code, tools, and lessons as openly as the problem it solves allows.
  10. 10Counts learning as success, so that if at least one thing was learned in building it, the software has succeeded.
  11. 11Lets people own their data and make every decision about what happens to it.
  12. 12Creates no new human-shaped problems while solving the one it set out to solve.
  13. 13Is written in the builder's own voice, so that every word is shaped by a human, and no machine pretends to be one.
  14. 14Credits everyone and everything responsible for it, including people, communities, AI agents, tools, and processes.
  15. 15Brings joy to at least one person in the form it ships today, even if that person is the builder.

Not every principle will be met on the first day, and "not yet, and here is what I am doing about it" is an honest answer. Silence is not.

Declare your software human-shaped

Why Human Shaped exists

Read the principles on GitHub, where they are written and argued about.