How this works

Eight people, measured honestly.

The Ashta Project puts people into clusters of eight and measures whether it makes any difference. Whether groups composed one way do better than groups composed another. Whether a stated intention moves the thing it names. Whether the rhythm of the practice matters at all. These are open questions, and the answer may well be no.

The beta is open for the first eight groups of eight. You can come alone or bring friends. Ordinary automatic matching for the research comparison has its own launch threshold, shown below.

1. 01

   You answer the profiling survey

   Open to you now

   Personality, self-placement, birth details if you want the chart lenses, and a few words in your own hand. It builds your own Eightfold report, which you can read straight away, and it is what counts you as fully onboarded.

2. 02

   You mark when you could meet

   Open to you now

   Mark your free times in your own timezone over the next eight weeks. The app uses the overlap to book meetings when your cluster is ready. You do not need to fill all eight weeks before a meeting can be booked.

3. 03

   Join the beta or wait for ordinary matching

   Open to you now

   Automatic matching does not compose ordinary research clusters before 1,000 members have finished onboarding. Separately, people may apply for a beta cluster individually for manual placement, or start their own Cluster. Applying to start your own Cluster includes your explicit admission and recording consent, then gives you a link to invite seven friends. Each friend signs in and consents before taking a seat. These eight-seat beta clusters meet outside the research comparison.

4. 04

   Ordinary research clusters are composed

   General launch threshold

   Members are grouped by timezone so that meeting is physically possible, then composed by several different methods running side by side, including deliberately random ones. You are not told which method built yours, because knowing would change how you behave in it.

5. 05

   Your cluster is booked from its availability

   Open to you now

   When all eight seats are filled, all eight members are asked for their free times. Once all eight have added availability, the app automatically books a common time for the whole meeting and its eight-minute arrival window, within the cluster's weekly allowance. If no time fits everyone, all eight are asked to widen their free times. Each member receives a calendar invitation and reminders. Later meetings use the availability overlap at a quorum of six of the eight, one meeting at a time, with no fixed slot. Any of the eight can also start a session there and then. Nobody chairs it and nobody has a casting vote: the group deliberates and the app decides what follows.

6. 06

   Intentions are sealed, then resolved

   Later in the sequence

   Each is written as something that will be plainly true or false on a named date, and locked before that date arrives. Some are held back as controls and are not worked on at all. Nothing is reworded afterwards, which is the single rule that separates this from an anecdote.

7. 07

   Results are published either way

   Later in the sequence

   Including the ones that show nothing at all, which is where most of them will land if the honest answer is that none of this works. That commitment is written down in Why We Publish Nulls, and it is the part you should hold us to.

The detail is in the five member documents: read them in Resources. Shorter answers are in the questions and answers and the live count toward the thousand is on your cluster page.