Ethotechnics Institute. Research, practice, and prototypes for humane infrastructure.
Library overview

See how the Ethotechnics library is organized.

Welcome to the library. Pick up a pattern, practice, or tool you can run today, then add more as your team is ready.

Patterns

Name what’s stuck and map the first moves.

Practice guides

Step-by-step agendas with prompts and facilitator notes.

Resources & tools

Checklists, simulators, and worksheets for teams and solo work.

Field notes

Proof from crews who tried the work and logged what changed.

Maintenance partnerships

Lightweight agreements for relief rotations and accountability.

Explore the collections Compare patterns, practices, resources, and tools.
Relationship map

See how the stacks reinforce each other.

This sketch shows how patterns, practices, tools, and field notes circulate effort. Pick the entry point that fits your bandwidth and keep looping around as you add support.

  • Patterns frame the problem and clarify the stakes.
  • Practices rehearse the shift with agendas and prompts.
  • Tools simulate decisions and document agreements.
  • Field notes capture proof and feed it back into the patterns.

Arrows move clockwise: patterns shape practices, practices pair with tools, tools generate evidence, and field notes report back into the patterns.

Collections

Choose the pillar that matches your pressure.

Pick the lane that matches your moment—direction, facilitation, receipts, or rehearsal space. Each entry links to featured downloads, context, and adjacent tools so you can keep layering support.

Patterns

High-level blueprints for distributing accountability across systems. Each entry outlines tensions, common failure modes, and the signals that tell you when to escalate care.

Browse patterns

Practices

Self-serve facilitation guides that help you convene the people doing upkeep. Pull the agendas, checklists, and worksheets into your next retro or tabletop exercise, or ask us to steward a session through our facilitated practices.

Browse practice guides

Resources

Curated packets of research, policy language, and tooling. Use them to brief leadership, align coalition partners, or document how your team is stewarding critical infrastructure.

View resources

Tools & experiments

Interactive calculators, simulators, and worksheets for rehearsing generous maintenance. Try them with your team to surface hidden labor and redistribute responsibility.

Launch a tool

Tag filter

Choose tags to surface matching entries.

Showing 8 entries. Switch between AND/OR modes to refine the view.

Match
Interactive previews

Try the rehearsal tools without leaving the page.

Move a slider to watch how the burden modeler and maintenance simulator respond. The previews are nontechnical—just a quick glimpse of how the tools expose hidden labor and redistribute work.

Burden modeler

See how staffing buffers rebalance the load.

Slide the coverage up or down to see how quickly the work shifts away from frontline teams and which tasks stay invisible.

30% coverage deployed

Frontline coordinators 48%

Late-night follow-ups are still unlogged.

Operations stewards 32%

Procurement and payouts trail behind.

Volunteer care leads 20%

Emotional labor is barely counted yet.

Frontline load now sits at 48%. Hidden calls still cluster with them until buffers exceed 40%.

Open the full modeler
Maintenance simulator

Check how funding choices expose hidden labor.

Adjust the maintenance budget and toggle emergency coverage. Watch reliability, burnout risk, and harm propaga tion respond.

Budget at 90% of required coverage.

Reliability score 68

Scheduled rounds catch weak points.

Burnout risk 55

After-hours calls still lean on the same people.

Harm propagation 45

Small cracks are contained before they spread.

With coverage on-call, reliability is recovering while burnout risk still shows lingering hidden labor.

Open the full simulator
Featured entries

See what's been updated recently.

Pair a pattern with a practice, then add supporting resources. These combinations are a starting point—remix them based on the pressure you’re under.

  • Pattern + practice

    Run Accountability Escalation with a maintenance roundtable.

    Map decision rights with the pattern, then use the roundtable facilitation kit to keep responsibilities visible across shifts.

    Start with the pattern

  • Resource + tool

    Brief leadership, then simulate the maintenance load.

    Share the maintenance primer from the resources stack, then plug the same data into the burden modeler to show who’s carrying the work.

    Open the burden modeler

  • Field note

    Study how teams rotate relief in real engagements.

    Field notes document how partnerships share upkeep. Use them to spot rituals worth adapting before you scope your own pilots.

    Browse field notes
Navigation tips

Keep your bearings while you browse.

The fastest way to get value is to pair one self-serve artifact with a lightweight conversation. Here are three starting moves.

  • Get oriented

    Skim a pattern to name what’s breaking.

    Patterns provide shared language for the tension you’re seeing. Once everyone’s aligned, you can choose the right practice.

  • Facilitate

    Pull a practice and run it with your team.

    Every guide includes agendas, prompts, and worksheets so you can pilot the change before involving the full studio.

  • Sustain

    Subscribe for updates.

    The newsletter announces new releases, invitations, and ways to plug into partnerships.