Join the Meta-Layer Chapter

🌍 What Is the Meta-Layer?

In simple terms, the Meta-Layer is the shared interface space above websites where overlays, annotations, and tools can appear.

You’ve already seen it in action:

• Hypothesis 🖊️ (for social annotation)

• Honey 🛒 (for discount code overlays)

• Ad blockers, password managers, AI sidebars

These are early glimpses of what a meta-layer can be - a shared space above the web where people can think, meet, and build together.

The Overlooked Layer Above the Webpage

A Chapter for Civic Internet Builders

The Meta-Layer Chapter exists to coordinate people, projects, and learning that advance the Meta-Layer as public digital infrastructure. It is where ideas move from theory into practice, guided by shared values of agency, accountability, and collective intelligence.

Members participate in working circles, pilot projects, documentation efforts, and public dialogue, helping ensure that the space above the webpage evolves as a commons rather than a proprietary control layer.

How the Chapter and SIG Work Together

The Meta-Layer Chapter is the primary public participation and coordination space. It focuses on community-building, applied projects, education, pilot deployments, and civic engagement.

The Meta-Layer SIG continues as an independent standards, research, and technical coordination body. While unaffiliated with ISOC, it remains active as a neutral forum for developing specifications, design patterns, and governance frameworks for the meta-layer.

Together, the Chapter and SIG form a healthy ecosystem grounded in practice, rigor, and long-term stewardship.

Joining the Meta-Layer Chapter means becoming part of an active working group.

Members can choose to:

• Participate in working circles focused on trust, AI containment, governance, or civic overlays

• Contribute to pilot projects and real-world experiments

• Help document use cases, patterns, and lessons learned

• Support outreach, education, and public dialogue

• Connect with others building aligned tools and initiatives

You do not need to be a developer or policy expert. The Meta-Layer is inherently interdisciplinary, and this Chapter values diverse perspectives and lived experience.

Participation levels vary; some members contribute regularly to projects, others participate in discussion, review, or outreach.

Ways to Participate

Why Chapters Matter

The future of the Internet will not be shaped by standards alone, nor by platforms acting in isolation. It will be shaped by communities who practice governance, experiment in the open, and build shared understanding over time.

Chapters create durable civic space by giving people a place to practice governance, collaboration, and stewardship together over time, not just discuss ideas.

The Meta-Layer Chapter exists so this work can continue steadily, transparently, and inclusively, independent of any single institution.

Early participants in the Meta-Layer Chapter are recognized as part of the Founding Wave - people who helped shape the Chapter during its initial formation.

Founding Wave members receive a digital badge acknowledging their early participation.

Founding Wave

Who Should Join

The Meta-Layer Chapter is for people who care about:

• Trust, safety, and accountability online

• Human agency in AI-mediated environments

• Civic infrastructure and public-interest technology

• Interface-level governance and design

• Regenerative, participatory approaches to the future of the Web
  

If you believe the space above the webpage matters, you belong here.

Join the Chapter

The Meta-Layer is not a product or a platform. It is a shared civic project.

By joining the Meta-Layer Chapter, you are choosing to participate in the early, practical work of shaping how trust, presence, and coordination function in the digital public sphere.