The shared layer outlives every product.
All principles · 05 / Ecosystem over application
Any one product (One, IAM, Cortex, Alpha, Praxis, Horizon) can be replaced, outcompeted, or abandoned.
In practice
No single record owner
Shared contracts
Products stay replaceable
Test
If losing one product would lose the community's record, identity, or ability to coordinate, the application has been allowed to become the ecosystem.
Read the full principle
Principle
The shared layer, rather than any single product, is the thing that lasts.
Meaning
Any one product (One, IAM, Cortex, Alpha, Praxis, Horizon) can be replaced, outcompeted, or abandoned. The coordination layer is what a community depends on. Optimizing for the ecosystem means each product can fail without the community's record, identity, and relationships failing with it. The application is a tool the ecosystem uses; the ecosystem must never become a tool of the application.
In practice
No single product is the system of record for community identity or decisions.
Products interoperate through the shared contracts rather than through private integrations.
A product can be replaced and the community continues.
Product pressure
This principle favors:
the shared layer as the durable core
products as replaceable implementations
interop defined by public contracts
no product holding the community's record hostage
Test
If losing one product would lose the community's record, identity, or ability to coordinate, the application has been allowed to become the ecosystem.