The final showcase presentation had just wrapped. Twenty-five builders, artists, scientists, and activists gathered around the library at Hosteria Plaza Mayor, watching the social graph visualization unfold on screen - a web of connections forged over ten intense days at the edge of the world. Each node represented a person, each line a collaboration, each cluster a Covenant Study Circle or workshop that had brought strangers into deep creative partnership.
The numbers told one story: 58 signatures on the Covenant, 15 visions shared, 11 submissions across five thematic tracks. But the real story was written in the one-word descriptions participants used to capture the residency: magic, constellation, animating, holistic, human.
In November 2025, human.tech and Universal Profiles co-hosted an intimate 10-day residency for 25 participants at Edge City Patagonia in San Martín de los Andes, Argentina. We set out to explore a question: "What happens when you bring aligned builders together in the Andes, give them a philosophical framework in the Covenant of Humanistic Technologies, and ask them to turn principles into prototypes?"
The answer exceeded our expectations.
The Daily Rhythm: From Mountains to Manifesto
Each morning began with optional nature walks through Patagonian landscapes - snow-capped peaks reflected in crystal lakes, the kind of vast beauty that recalibrates perspective. By 8am, those who wanted gathered for morning pages, quiet journaling time before the day's intensity began. After breakfast, we moved into the heart of the residency: Covenant Study Circles.
Over the course of the residency, we worked through all ten principles of the Covenant - a framework for embedding digital rights into technology design - from Universal Personhood and Inalienable Ownership to Earth Public Goods and Adaptive Resilience.
They were active interrogations of what it means to build technology that serves humanity rather than extracting from it. Each principle became a lens through which participants viewed their own work, asking: Does this align? Does this protect? Does this empower?
Afternoons alternated between structured workshops and deep work sessions. We held technical deep dives on Privacy by Design, On-Chain Social Identity, and Brain Security. We explored governance through the "DAOs Through the Lens of d/acc" workshop. We grounded our work in local context through the Argentine Tech Ecosystem workshop. And always, there was space - space for conversation, for collaboration, for the kind of unexpected connections that only happen when you slow down enough to notice them.
The "Code Is Law" documentary screening with Q&A by Fabian Vogelsteller sparked late-night philosophical debates. Adventure kayaking and a mountain excursion to Cerro Chapelco reminded us why we were building for a livable future. And the d/acc Night Owls sessions, impromptu gatherings that stretched past midnight, became the place where ideas that started in workshops began to form into code.
The Builders: A Constellation of Perspectives
The residency produced submissions spanning documentary film, governance frameworks, neurotech systems, open hardware, and AI infrastructure. Each project emerged from the intersection of individual expertise and collective exploration of the Covenant principles. Here are the builders and what they created:
Natura Codex by Migle Rusina, Samantha Cavet, Claire Quinn, Angelica Vidal and Liliana Muscarella.
Migle, a digital rights activist and documentary filmmaker, brought her background from the chaos of web3, from NFT startups to VC to finding her people at winPrivacy, on a mission to "rebrand privacy" and make it accessible. Building on human.tech's Natura Codex documentary concept (initiated by human.tech stewards Angelica Vidal and Liliana Muscarella), Migle led on-ground production during the residency. She collaborated with Samantha, a visual artist and photographer whose work explores memory and transformation, and Claire, a content creator who explores human behavior and intercultural perspectives through documentary-style storytelling, to create the fully developed documentary.
Novel Open-Source Dataset for Non-Invasive Glucose Monitoring using fNIRS, Covenant Council, and Trustless Minds by Carol Calin.
Working at the intersection of brain-computer interfaces, privacy, and security, Carol developed multiple submissions including a novel open-source dataset for non-invasive glucose monitoring using fNIRS technology, the Covenant Council governance framework, and Trustless Minds, an exploration of privacy through open hardware. Her background—growing up in post-communist Romania, studying politics, psychology, law, and economics—drives her commitment to using deep tech not for control, but for autonomy and sovereignty.
Brainwaves as Proof of Personhood and AI Agentic Internet by Yesh Punyani and Magali.
Yesh, founder of ZuGrama, a startup society and network state in India, brought his background in mechanical engineering, physics, and satellite building to explore Brainwaves as Proof of Personhood. He collaborated with Magali, a backend developer at LUKSO focused on account abstraction, to develop the AI Agentic Internet. Yesh's worldview shift—from competition to relentless pursuit of a specific future for humanity—captured the residency's ethos perfectly.
Votar by Ed and Mitch.
Ed and Mitch built Votar, a voting mechanism that could transform DAO governance. Ed, an electrical engineer from Chubut Province in Patagonia itself, works as backend engineering lead at LUKSO maintaining systems that enable subsidized blockchain transactions. Mitch, a long-time contributor in the public goods and DAO space with Giveth and TEC, came to the residency feeling drained of inspiration. He left re-energized, building toward something that matters again.
BEFORE WE CAN BUILD FOR HUMANS by Eric Annan.
Orchestrator of Africa's largest Web3 incubation engine and leader of AyaHQ, Eric created BEFORE WE CAN BUILD FOR HUMANS, an essay aligning his network state work with Covenant principles. His presentation on "Building Trust for High-Growth Markets (Africa and Beyond)" brought crucial perspective on how these principles translate across contexts.
Adaptive Empathetic Intelligence (AEI) by Rebecca (Bec).
A designer and creative director from Berlin who spent 12 years building products while touring as an electronic music producer, Bec developed Adaptive Empathetic Intelligence (AEI), exploring the connection between technology and human evolution.
NEURO/KEY: PASSTHOUGHT by AJ.
With a decade of foundational research in deep learning for BCI and medical devices, Amelia created NEURO/KEY: PASSTHOUGHT, addressing the practical, technical, and legal challenges of making brain-computer interfaces a reality for proof of personhood.
Supporting Contributors.
Key contributors from the human.tech and LUKSO ecosystems provided essential guidance throughout the residency. Louis Tajan, Lead Cryptographer at human.tech with a PhD focused on privacy-preserving techniques like Homomorphic Encryption and MPC, gave a presentation on "Cryptography for Safe Biometrics with Human Keys." Fabian Vogelsteller, creator of the ERC-20 token standard and the MIST browser, guided technical workshops on Universal Profiles and on-chain social identity. Maria, working at the intersection of art and technology in LA, co-facilitated the residency, bringing her background in legal tech and her fascination with technology's impact on the human condition. Juan Aranovich, an economist from Buenos Aires working in crypto media and operations, helped ground the work in Argentine context.
The Covenant Manifests
On the third week of Edge City Patagonia, during Demo Day, we made the official announcement: The Covenant of Humanistic Technologies was live at manifest.human.tech. But for our residency participants, this wasn't news. From day one, they had been living with the Covenant, interrogating it, building in response to it.
The power of having a shared philosophical framework became immediately apparent. Conversations that might have spun into abstraction were anchored by specific principles. Projects that might have solved narrow technical problems were elevated by asking how they served the broader vision. The Covenant wasn't a constraint but a catalyst.
Universal Profiles provided critical infrastructure that made this tangible. Through their platform, we were able to map event attendance, create and distribute tokens for each workshop and study circle, and visualize the emerging social graph in real-time. The result was a living record of collaboration - you could see which workshops sparked the most cross-pollination, which conversations created new partnerships, which ideas gained momentum.
Tangible Outcomes
Numbers tell part of the story:
58 humans signed the Covenant
15 visions shared on manifest.human.tech
11 submissions developed across five thematic tracks
Dozens of workshops, study circles, and technical presentations
172 relationships mapped in the Universal Profiles social graph
Grant awards currently being evaluated to support continued development
But the deeper outcome was captured in the responses when we asked participants to describe the residency in one word: stimulating, empanadas (naturally), inspiring, nature, community, motivational. One participant said it perfectly: "on a serious note: holistic."
What's Next: The Work Continues
The Human Tech Residency at Edge City Patagonia proved something crucial: the future we want to build isn't just possible - it's already emerging. The Covenant isn't an abstract ideal; it's a practical framework that helps aligned builders find each other and create together.
This was just the first chapter. We're already planning what comes next:
The Evening Society #2 will bring the Covenant to Paris in 2026 - an intimate salon where builders and thinkers will gather to explore the principles of human-aligned technologies. It's a chance for the European community to engage with the work that started in Patagonia.
More residencies are in development for 2026, bringing the d/acc approach to new geographies and contexts. Stay tuned for announcements.
The Covenant community is growing, and you’re invited.
Join the Movement
The work that started in Patagonia continues, and there are many ways to contribute:
Engage with the Covenant
Visit manifest.human.tech to:
Create your account
Sign the declaration
Browse the growing collection of submissions
Create your own submission - whether it's art, research, code, or creative expression
Stay Connected
Follow us on X for updates, insights, and announcements
Join the bi-weekly community calls to engage with other builders
Watch for announcements about The Evening Society #2 in Paris and 2026 residencies
Thank You
This residency was made possible by our collaboration with Universal Profiles, whose technology and support enabled us to map the social graph, distribute tokens, and visualize the constellation of connections that formed. Thank you to Fabian, Kat, Magali, Ed, and the entire LUKSO team for believing in this vision.
And thank you to every resident who made the journey to Patagonia, who engaged with the Covenant principles, who stayed up late debugging code and debating philosophy, who created work that will ripple outward for years to come.
The future is being built by humans who care about humans. We're just getting started.
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