Concept

Sovereign Engineering rests on five fundamental pillars that create the conditions for magical collaboration:

The Weekly Loop: The relentless show → talk → build rhythm that drives momentum and prevents perfectionism paralysis. Every week follows the same structure, creating a metronome for creativity.

The Walks: Moderate hikes that stimulate creative thought through "left foot, right foot, left brain, right brain" activation. Walking isn't downtime—it's moving R&D.

Friday Demo Days: Where the rubber meets the road—every participant must demo working code every week, no exceptions. Aggressively time-boxed with 6-minute demos and 2-minute discussions.

Six Captains: Each week has a dedicated captain who steers the ship, ensuring organic emergence rather than top-down direction. Leadership rotates, keeping the program tight without feeling top-down.

In-Person Intensity: Being physically present on a remote island creates the commitment and focus needed for deep work. High-bandwidth communication, trust building, and ideation only work in person.

The week acts as a metronome for creativity. Friday's Show sets a hard deadline that concentrates effort—every participant must demo something they wrote or prompted into existence themselves. The moment code compiles on stage it becomes shared reality. Over the weekend and during Monday's orientation the cohort Talks—walking Madeira's levadas, swapping critiques, and letting distributed cognition surface better approaches. From Tuesday onwards everyone Builds toward the next demo.

Walking isn't downtime—it's moving R&D. The weekend walks are the absolute core pillar of Sovereign Engineering, designed for light-to-moderate two- to three-hour hikes at a comfortable pace where participants can walk side-by-side and have conversations without breaking a sweat.

Why Walking Works: Research shows walking stimulates creative thought. As one participant put it: "left foot, right foot, left brain, right brain." The physical movement activates your whole being and creates the perfect conditions for free-flowing ideas.

Natural Group Mixing: With 21 participants, the walks naturally mix the group. You'll have many different conversational partners during a three-hour walk. Two guides—one at the front, one at the back—ensure the group stays together by stopping every 20 minutes to enjoy views, take water breaks, and let everyone catch up.

The Alternative: Contrast this with sitting around a long table for dinner—you'd have at most three conversational partners (left, right, front) and the group wouldn't mix. Walking creates the natural group formation and spontaneous conversations we need.

The Path Requirements: The path must be wide enough so people can walk next to each other (not single-file), mostly flat so anyone can participate, and comfortable enough that you can talk while walking. The guides must keep the group together and stop regularly to let everyone catch up.

The island's levadas, coastal paths, and high-altitude ridges offer constantly changing scenery—nature's own slide deck. Exposure to sun, wind, and ocean spray anchors discussions in sensory memory; participants can later reference "that idea above the cloud layer" and everyone knows the exact moment.

Nothing concentrates the mind like a live demo. Every Friday afternoon the cohort gathers to show whatever runs. Polish is optional, honesty is mandatory. The rule is simple: you must demo something new every week—either related to ongoing work or completely fresh ideas.

The Format: Aggressively time-boxed with 6 minutes of demo time and 2 minutes of discussion. With 20+ demos, we take breaks after every 6-7 presentations, usually running three sessions. The day typically ends around 6 PM.

The Philosophy: We highly encourage trying crazy ideas every week. It doesn't matter if it's half-broken or half-baked—just give it your best shot and show it on Friday. This prevents "strudelutions" by forcing thin vertical slices over speculative architecture.

The Celebration: After demos, we have a standing barbecue (no pre-arranged seating) that encourages natural group mixing. Friends and family are invited to join, creating a bridge between the private program and the broader community.

The Impact: Demo Day serves as a public ledger of progress. Six Fridays equal six checkpoints, creating proof-of-work encoded in weekly commits that prospective participants can review.

This is a private, off the record event—a core principle that cannot be overstated. You cannot do proper thinking completely out in the open. You have to be able to think in private and communicate in private without worrying about the online mob coming after you for having a crazy, weird, or stupid idea.

Why Privacy Matters: We want to build out in the open and care deeply about open source, but ideation and experimentation require a safe space. You only want criticism from people who are actually on your side—otherwise you might destroy a gem of an idea too early.

The Experience: We've learned this through hard experience. Bringing outside people into the group too early destroys the dynamic and trust built over weeks. The private space allows for unconstrained thinking and the discussion of more radical ideas.

The Balance: Once ideas are robust, they're exported to the open sea—published on Nostr, open-sourced on GitHub, or demoed publicly. The off-record space ensures critique targets the work, not internet clout.

Presence: We encourage participants to be fully present—leave phones at home or put them in airplane mode. If an idea is really good, you won't need to write it down—it will stay with you or someone else will remember it.

Each week has a dedicated captain who steers the ship through that week's journey. The captain is the person who basically steers the ship through each week, ensuring organic emergence rather than top-down direction.

Captain Responsibilities: Captain responsibilities include shepherding the walks by setting the conversational pace, choosing wide paths, and ensuring group mixing. Captains also time-box Friday demos, keep Monday orientations on track, organize Wednesday workshops and find time slots, arrange rooms appropriately for different activities (talks, workshops, demos), and give talks and presentations when appropriate.

The Rotation: By rotating leadership every week, the cohort practices the very autonomy it preaches. Leadership is shared, logistics are decentralized, and the program stays tight without feeling top-down.

The Exception: One week (week 4 or 5) is designated as "time off" because the program is quite intense. We learned over time that we need this break.

Madeira isn't just a beautiful location—it's a Bitcoin-friendly breeding ground for the future. Thanks to the efforts of André and Free Madeira, there are 150+ merchants on the island accepting Bitcoin. It's so normal to pay in Bitcoin here that you don't even think about it anymore.

The Alpha Test Experience: You can build a new wallet on Thursday, then go to the coffee shop on Friday and pay with the wallet you built yesterday. It works, and it's an amazing feeling. In some way, you can alpha test the future in Madeira.

The Filter Effect: You can't just swing by and leave—you have to fly there. This creates a natural filter ensuring participants are committed to the full six-week experience.

The Environment: Madeira is a volcanic island with subtropical climate, dark volcanic cliffs, and breathtaking topography. It's a magical place that allows for the spontaneous creation of new things and the spawning of new ideas.

The Community: There are many Bitcoiners on the island, and the merchant adoption is through the roof. It's a fantastic place to run a Sovereign Engineering cohort because it's super Bitcoin-friendly and allows immediate testing of new protocols and tools.

We're looking for 21 value-aligned builders who know what they're doing and want to see more cool stuff built. We don't have any official requirements—we're very open and just want to be surrounded by people who are value-aligned.

The Ideal Participant: The ideal participant is an experienced builder who resonates with the Bitcoin ethos, can code independently, and is eager to explore the frontier. They are excited—rather than terrified—by the prospect of demoing half-baked prototypes, and they crave long, oxytocin-fueled walks and thrive on rapid feedback. They believe that freedom-tech is the moral imperative of our time, want to build the future they want to see, and are willing to be fully present and participate in the full program.

The Magic Formula: When you bring 21 value-aligned people together in a place that's super Bitcoin-friendly, beautiful, and allows for spontaneous creation, magical things are bound to happen.

The Goal: We want to see awesome stuff being built, expand the impact that freedom tech can have, come up with new ideas and protocols, test them immediately, and have a good time while doing it.