Things live longer than people and people must care for these long-lived items while we live our short lives. Items (such as tools, textiles, furniture, etc) comprise a portion of the worlds commons. Custodisco is a suite of tools which promote the stewardship of things by fostering and documenting the relationships between people and things

Items with a documented history of care are more valuable to people than items which aren't. Items that are valued more by people are more likely to live longer lives, be well taken care of and less likely to die in the landfill. Less items going to waste is the goal.

The Custodisco kiosk allows people to print tags as stickers for rigid items or as ribbons for textiles items. The tag may be drawn by hand on the kiosk, or an image may be uploaded. For each item tagged an associated Scuttlebutt message is generated for resilient storage of stories and history of the item. The ID of this Scuttlebutt message is a cryptographic, decentralized identifier for the item, resiliently independent of any central authority. The tags contain a QR code of this ID which can be scanned to pull up information about the item.

Project development is ongoing. Workshops are underway to allow people to test out the kiosk and software as well as cultivate a culture of care and maintenance.

As items are added to Custodisco, collections management functionality will need to be built. It is expected that users with many items will desire a robust interface to manage their items. Users may like to transfer items to other users. This can be done in a cryptograpically verifiable way via Scuttlebutt. So this is another feature that will be built out.

Through the workshops and open source software development we additionally hope to build understanding of modern cultures of repair, maintenance and care.