Products·Evaluation design
Does your product honor human sovereignty?
A structured way to find out.
Why this exists
Most products extract value from people without examining whether they should. This toolkit gives you a structured, honest way to evaluate whether the technology you build - or the technology you use - treats people as sovereign beings or as resources to be mined.
It does not require an ethics degree. It requires honesty.
What you get
47-point checklist
Concrete, scorable items across every dimension of the user relationship. No abstract principles - specific, observable behaviors you can audit today.
Scoring rubric
Domain-level and overall sovereignty scores. Domain health map that shows where you're strong and where the gaps live.
6 red flag items
The six items that override everything else. Start here if you have 5 minutes. A product that fails any one of these has work to do, regardless of its overall score.
Action plan template
Prioritize findings, assign owners, set timelines. Turn the assessment into a sprint.
The seven domains
Transparency
"Are we honest about what we're doing and why?"
Autonomy
"Does the product support user goals - or hijack them?"
Invitation
"Are we inviting people in - or trapping them?"
Dignity
"Do we treat people as whole beings - or as conversion targets?"
Silence
"Do we know when to stop talking?"
Data sovereignty
"Who owns what - and do they know it?"
AI and voice
"If an AI speaks for us, does it honor the people it speaks to?"
Who this is for
Product teams
Run this on your product before your users run it for you. Surface the gaps between what you intend and what you've built.
Procurement and compliance
Evaluate vendor products before adoption. A structured rubric is more useful than a trust-me pitch deck.
Founders
Build the assessment into your development process from day one. It's cheaper to honor sovereignty than to retrofit it.
Buy the toolkit
The Toolkit is also available as a free Claude skill, /sovereignty-assess, that runs you through the same 47 items conversationally. The PDF below is the polished version for offline use, team distribution, and reference. Choose whichever serves you. The methodology is the same.
PDF download. Use it on as many products as you want.
Buy the ToolkitIncludes the 47-point checklist, scoring rubric, domain health map, red flag items, action plan template, and the five principles appendix.
Go deeper
The toolkit gives you the assessment. If you want help acting on the results, two doorways from here.