PolicyKit is an open-source toolkit for building and evolving governance in online communities. It empowers community members to author governance procedures through concise policy code rather than managing permissions manually, enabling more democratic and flexible governance models. Inspired by Nobel economist Elinor Ostrom's work on governance systems, PolicyKit provides a framework where governance is expressed as a series of actions and policies written in short programming scripts that are automatically executed by software.
Instead of traditional permission systems, PolicyKit allows communities to define how actions can be performed through composable policies that can be edited, downloaded, and merged in JSON format. The toolkit includes implementations for popular platforms including Slack, Reddit, and Discord, with plans for additional integrations. PolicyKit is part of the larger Metagov project, which aims to make governance procedures portable and interoperable across different platforms.