Open, practical tools for when the services don't work — drinkable water when the tap is cut, light in a blackout, a part you can 3D‑print when the supply chain is gone. A queryable index of working solutions, plus a live emergency‑response layer for Venezuela.
🌐 Live: https://ttw.fab.city · Emergency page: https://ttw.fab.city/venezuela A project of the Fab City Foundation.
Two traditions reached the same conclusion from opposite ends. The Whole Earth Catalog called it access to tools. Cut off after the Soviet collapse, Cubans practiced what Ernesto Oroza named technological disobedience. One pole is abundance choosing self‑reliance; the other is scarcity forcing it. Both produce the same artifact: a thing that works, made or kept alive locally. That is what this repository collects — and, since June 2026, puts directly in the hands of Venezuelans living through an earthquake on top of years of degraded services.
This is not an archive of PDFs. It is a queryable index, tagged by what each solution does, what it's made of, what scarcity it answers — rendered as calm, mobile‑first, offline‑capable web pages in Spanish, English and Indonesian.
repo/
├─ data/ # ← the content (edit here)
│ ├─ *.json # solution sources (Whole Earth, Cuba, OLIVE, Appropedia, MSF…)
│ └─ i18n/ # translations: es.json, id.json, crisis.es.json, crisis.id.json
├─ build_dataset.py # builds the dataset + pages from data/ → dist/
├─ ia_pipeline.py # grows the Whole Earth index from the Internet Archive
├─ template.html # main ttw.fab.city page (data injected at build)
├─ template_ve.html # the /venezuela page — design + render logic (data‑driven)
├─ deploy/ # the published site (served by Cloudflare Pages)
│ ├─ index.html # built main page
│ ├─ venezuela/ # built /venezuela page + PWA assets + offline ZIP
│ ├─ files/ferulas/ # printable splint files (designs © Ostec3D)
│ └─ _headers # Cloudflare headers
├─ SCHEMA.md # the data model + the nine "disobedience moves"
└─ CONTRIBUTING.md # how to add solutions, translations, or design changes
# 1. Open the built pages directly — no server, no build, data is baked in:
open deploy/venezuela/index.html # the Venezuela emergency page
open deploy/index.html # the main Things That Work page
# 2. Rebuild after editing data/ or a template (needs Python 3 + Pillow for icons):
pip install pillow
python3 build_dataset.py # regenerates dist/ (and the page HTML)
# 3. Preview locally over http (service worker / PWA needs http, not file://):
python3 -m http.server 8000 --directory deploy
# → http://localhost:8000/venezuela/A single, self‑contained, offline‑first page, mobile‑first and trilingual,
designed to lead people straight to action with dignity. It is data‑driven:
template_ve.html (design + render JS) + data/ + data/i18n/ are compiled into
deploy/venezuela/index.html.
- Design language — the graphic world of Carlos Cruz‑Diez's Maiquetía airport (the kinetic colour stripe) and Metro de Caracas / MetroDiseño 1983 (the orange M + downward‑chevron emblema, colour‑coded stations, Helvetica signage), with IKEA‑manual clarity inside (numbered steps, geometric pictograms, lots of air). An icon of progress and hope — not a disaster bulletin.
- Offline / on your phone — "Descargar esta página" (one self‑contained file to share by WhatsApp/Bluetooth), "Instalar como app" (PWA), and a full ZIP with the printable files.
- Sections — report missing people / damaged buildings · 3D‑printing response (splints by Ostec3D, maker WhatsApp groups, the live Ushahidi map) · what‑helps playbook by scenario · the wider archive by need · contribute · and the earthquake briefing at the foot.
To change its content you almost never touch HTML — edit data/ and data/i18n/.
See CONTRIBUTING.md.
The site is Cloudflare Pages serving the deploy/ folder, connected directly to this
repository: every push to main publishes automatically (output directory deploy, no
build command). No CI secrets or workflow files are required.
To publish manually instead, upload things-that-work-cloudflare.zip (regenerate it from
deploy/) in the Cloudflare dashboard, or run
npx wrangler pages deploy deploy --project-name=things-that-work.
The repository is the invitation; the network is what makes it alive. The fastest, most valuable contribution is five things that work from your city. See CONTRIBUTING.md for solutions, translations, and design changes, and SCHEMA.md for the data model.
Curated by Tomas Diez, Fab City Foundation. Splint designs by Ostec3D (ostec3d.com · @ostec3d). Sources: Whole Earth Catalog, Con nuestros propios esfuerzos & El Libro de la Familia (Cuba, via FabLab‑ULB / Ernesto Oroza), OLIVE (Japan), Appropedia, MSF, Field Ready, CDC, PAHO/OMS, and others credited in‑page.
- Code — MIT (
LICENSE). - Content, data & docs — CC BY‑SA 4.0 (
CONTENT-LICENSE.md). - Third‑party assets (e.g. the Ostec3D 3D files) remain © their authors; check each before reuse.