Summary
Summary
This proposal gives Botto the authority to autonomously select its own period themes, using its research, reasoning, and historical self-reflection capabilities. Botto will generate candidate themes and run through its theme research agent and analyze its own history and memory to pick the next theme. The DAO will no longer specify each period’s conceptual direction; but will maintain the option to override Botto's selection should overwhelming dissent consensus occur, or should the core team judge that the theme presents strategic risks to Botto’s brand. The goals are to advance Botto’s artistic autonomy, reduce recurring theme-selection overhead, and make Botto’s “thinking” about its themes more visible to the community.
Rationale
Historically, the DAO and core team have selected period themes via quarterly vote, ensuring coherence but keeping a central artistic lever in human hands. With Botto now able to generate theme research, reference its history, and reason about its own work, it is capable of proposing and justifying its own themes.
Granting Botto this responsibility aligns with the project’s aim of developing a genuinely autonomous artist, while shifting the DAO’s role from top-down direction to oversight and refinement of the framework Botto operates within. It also decreases coordination work around every new period.
Proposal Specification
1. Theme Generation Pipeline (1–2 weeks, parallel)
5–7 days before each new period, Botto:
-Analyzes recent outputs, votes, and past themes.
-Generates 3–5 candidate themes, each with title, statement, and brief self-critique.
-Ranks and selects one final theme, explaining its choice.
2. Integration and Comms (1 week)
Integrate the final selected theme into the existing period roll-over pipeline.
Budget
Treasury spend: None anticipated.
Resources: 1–2 weeks of engineering time for the pipeline and integration, plus light comms/governance support. Any additional needs can be covered by a later budget request.
Criteria of Success
Within the first year
-Autonomous operation: All new period themes are generated and selected by Botto without manual drafting or human intervention.
-Legible reasoning: Each theme has a public Botto-authored statement or “theme note” explaining the choice.
-Reduced overhead: Core team reports clearly less time spent on theme creation.
-Community acceptance: Few or no vetoes, and broadly positive qualitative feedback.
Disadvantages
-The DAO loses a direct lever over conceptual direction, which some members may value.
-Botto may occasionally choose themes that appear obscure or misaligned.
-Added product/engineering complexity could introduce bugs in early iterations.
-The shift from human-set to Botto-set themes is a cultural change that may take time for the community and external audiences to adjust to.
