ingroupie

Prosociality does not imply universal publication. Some knowledge is more valuable when it moves through a small, conscientious network at an appropriate rate.

ingroupie is a way for trusted professionals to tell each other cool things — techniques, relationships, capabilities, findings — that they would not post, because posting changes what the thing is. Something like a lawyer collective's stewardship reflex, without the legal machinery. Nothing here is binding. Everything here is held.

The aim is modest: make good people about twenty percent more willing to tell each other things.

Five norms

Low-key by default. If you learned it here, assume it is not yours to increase the blast radius of.
Don't widen the audience without considering the sharer's intent.
When scale changes the externalities, scale is morally relevant. Twenty conscientious people knowing a thing and ten thousand industrializing it are different acts.
If uncertain, ask rather than propagate.
No provenance games. Independent discovery is fine; once ingroupie supplied the causal path, don't launder it through “I could have found this myself.”

Three states

Commons	Ordinary sharing is fine.
Low-key	Use it, discuss it inside the intended community, don't broadcast it or turn it into content.
Held	Specifically bounded audience; widening requires the steward.

Low-key is the center. Most interesting material doesn't warrant spy-movie secrecy. It warrants people not tweeting it.

Audience is a resource

Every important artifact carries a small propagation contract, and every sensitive one has a human steward who interprets its intent. Widening is a request, not a judgement call:

Want to share with: Maya
Purpose: she is implementing the same storage architecture
Audience change: 14 → 15

Contributors answer one question up front — what changes if 10 people use this? 1,000? 1,000,000? — so members hold a model of the ecology, not just an instruction to keep quiet.

Joining

Admission tests stewardship, not tribe membership: evidence of building things, second-order reasoning, discretion, a low appetite for broadcasting, one or two vouches, a live conversation, probationary access. Moral pluralism is fine. You only need to be able to hold “Alice gave me this under these conditions; I will respect Alice's conditions.”

Not

No member directory, badges, follower counts, or leaderboards. No NDAs. No DRM — once a human knows something, they know it. ingroupie improves intent legibility, selection, social accountability, and propagation friction. It should be socially boring and technically extraordinary.

Early. Invitation only. Spec, schema, and examples: artifact policy.