FOUNDING HOST
first verified · stays-protocol live · joined 24 June 2026
Roost is a sovereign marketplace where the hosts own the platform, AI agents run the operations, and nobody takes a booking commission. Wishwood is the live reference implementation. This page explains what that means, why we joined, and where it's going.
Most accommodation marketplaces are platforms — owned by VCs, optimised for the platform's profit, charging 15-17% per booking. Roost is the opposite shape:
Members co-own roost · 1 host = 1 vote · no VCs, no founder shareholding, no exit · structurally unable to be acquired or sold.
AI agents handle new-host vetting, billing, fraud flagging, comms · members prompt + approve · ~2hrs/month oversight is the whole job.
Bookings go direct from guest to host's own Stripe. Roost takes nothing. £20/mo flat membership funds infrastructure only.
On a £1,000 booking · Airbnb keeps £150 · Booking.com £170 · roost £0. Stripe takes £14 to process. Wishwood keeps £986. That's £136 more per booking, in the host's pocket, in the local economy.
Personal AI agents (ChatGPT, Claude, future bots) are starting to book travel for people. They'll read structured data, not scraped HTML. Wishwood publishes a stays-protocol v1 manifest at /stays.json · any AI agent in the world can read it and book us direct. First mover.
Roost can't pivot to extract from hosts. The code is MIT, the protocol is CC0, the governance is consensus-based (not majority-vote), the financials are open-book, the only paid party (Simon Gant) gets fixed build fee + small interim stipend then £0 by default. No equity. No exit. Built to stay honest.
Guests who stay at Wishwood get post-stay suggestions for other roost hosts they might love (off-grid in Wales, treehouse in Snowdonia, bothy in the Cairngorms). Network effect without the platform tax. The roost cohort succeeds together.
Roost doesn't run a 51% rules vote. It uses FallConsensus — an open-source sovereign governance tool that measures whether the group is genuinely aligned across seven dimensions, not just "how many ticked yes."
The 7 dimensions of every decision: alignment · fairness · urgency · resources · risk · transparency · sustainability. Each member rates each dimension privately. The system measures cosine similarity between every pair of position vectors. Three conditions must all hold for 5 continuous seconds before consensus is declared:
More: FallConsensus · sovereign mesh governance · open source · runs in the browser · no central server
Roost was built by Simon Gant at AI Native Solutions in Kent. He's currently acting as interim steward + tech maintainer until the membership council is elected. Here's the transparent split of his role:
Simon's words on the deal:
Full financial transparency + role definition at roost.land/governance.
Codebase · stays-protocol v1 spec · Cloudflare worker · marketplace + governance UI · Wishwood publishing live manifest.
Hand-picked sovereign-aligned hosts from the Wishwood network + LinkedIn outreach. Each gets lifetime fee-locked at £20/month.
5-member governing council · 6-month terms · sets policy · approves AI prompts · monthly minutes published. Simon's coordinator role ends.
8-agent ops system (intake · approval · finance · comms · moderation · billing · reporting · audit) reaches autonomy under council oversight.
Members can vote Simon out (or keep him at a renegotiated rate). He hands over all keys + admin on member request, no resistance.
Roost is structurally unsellable. The only "exit" is dissolution by 3/4 member consensus, assets split equally among members on that date.
Being host #001 doesn't get Wishwood special treatment in the marketplace — same membership, same fee, same vote weight as everyone else. But it does mean:
The marketplace · the governance constitution · how AI agents run it · where every pound goes · the timeline to fully member-run.