An open-source operating system for scouting units. Calendars, communication, planning, and administration for Cub Scout packs and Scouts BSA troops — built so volunteers can spend their energy on scouts, not spreadsheets.
Status: Phase 0 — Validation. No product code exists yet, on purpose. This repository currently contains the specification, research, and decision records that will drive an AI-first build. See docs/06-roadmap.md for the plan and the kill gate that Phase 0 must pass before code begins.
Scouting America publishes the bones of the program — requirements, safety rules, planning doctrine — but no operational tooling for actually running a unit. The meat comes from individual volunteers, so every unit reinvents calendars, newsletters, dues collection, forms tracking, and annual planning from scratch, usually in a mash of paper files, personal Google Drives, and free Mailchimp accounts. The official tools (Scoutbook Plus) own advancement records and little else, and the 2024–2026 migration has been documented by volunteers, in their own words, as a driver of leader burnout and attrition.
MSS is a bet that the missing layer is unit operations: nested den/patrol/unit calendars, a weekly parent digest that writes itself, annual program planning that starts from official doctrine instead of a blank page, trusted email identity from the unit's own domain, and — eventually — district-level spaces where leaders can learn from each other instead of from scattered blogs.
- Not an advancement system of record. Scoutbook Plus is, legally and structurally. MSS is advancement-aware, never advancement-authoritative. See ADR-0001.
- Not a business first. MSS is a public good. The hosted service exists so non-technical units can use it; pricing exists to cover costs, scaled to unit size. See docs/00-mission.md.
- Not affiliated with Scouting America, the Girl Scouts of the USA, or any national scouting organization. See ADR-0004.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
| AGENTS.md | How AI coding agents (and humans) work in this repo |
| docs/00-mission.md | Mission, principles, goals, non-goals |
| docs/01-research.md | Condensed feasibility research: market, competitors, the API wall, volunteer pain |
| docs/02-personas.md | Who this serves |
| docs/03-requirements.md | Functional requirements by domain, phased |
| docs/04-architecture.md | Multi-tenancy, email/domain identity, AI layer, self-hosting |
| docs/05-data-protection.md | Youth data, COPPA, medical forms, the rules we build inside |
| docs/06-roadmap.md | Phases 0–3 with entry/exit criteria |
| docs/07-phase-0-validation.md | The current work: interview plan, kill criteria |
| docs/open-questions.md | Unresolved decisions, including the community-layer build/embed question |
| decisions/ | Architecture Decision Records |
Phase 0 contributions are conversations, not code: if you lead a pack or troop, the most valuable thing you can do is answer the interview questions in docs/07-phase-0-validation.md by opening an issue. Maintainer onboarding is a first-class project goal — the docs in this repo are written so that a new maintainer (or an AI agent) can pick up context without oral tradition.
Code will ship under an O'Saasy-style license (MIT freedoms — use, modify, self-host, redistribute — with hosted commercialization reserved to the project, following 37signals' Fizzy). Self-hosting by any unit, district, council, or scouting organization for its own members is always free. Documentation is CC BY-SA 4.0. Rationale and the abandonment dead-man switch in ADR-0002.
Modern Scouting Systems is an independent community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Scouting America, the Girl Scouts of the USA, or any national scouting organization.