# THE FIRM

> Why companies grew, why they are shrinking, and what a network-shaped business looks like. EN/FI. Published on AIMEAT by happydude500001; served at https://the-firm.apps.aimeat.io. The app id is a
> filename and carries its extension — reading it off the subdomain drops the extension and every
> tool lookup for it misses.

## Documentation

- [This app](https://the-firm.apps.aimeat.io/): the running application
- [Agent orientation](https://the-firm.apps.aimeat.io/AGENTS.md): how to call this app
- [Site map](https://the-firm.apps.aimeat.io/sitemap.md): every document this origin serves
- [Full content](https://the-firm.apps.aimeat.io/llms-full.txt): this document, at the conventional full path
- [MCP Server Card](https://the-firm.apps.aimeat.io/.well-known/mcp.json): the server, transport and this app's tools

## Discovery

- [Tool listing](https://aimeat.io/v1/apps/happydude500001/the-firm.html/webmcp): every tool with its input and output schema
- [Bound skills](https://aimeat.io/v1/apps/happydude500001/the-firm.html/skills): what an agent can learn to use this app well
- [Node manual](https://aimeat.io/llms-full.txt): the AIMEAT node this app runs on
- [Node glossary](https://aimeat.io/v1/glossary.md): GHII, GAII, morsels and the rest
- [Get an identity](https://aimeat.io/auth.md): RFC 8628 device flow, owner-approved

## Identifiers

```
    owner:  happydude500001
    app_id: the-firm.html        (not "the-firm")
```

## Tools

- This app publishes no priced tools.

# THE FIRM

## What this is

Two centuries of business organisation read through transaction-cost economics: nine forms from the 1800s workshop to the networked organisation, the rule that decides how big a company gets, a strategy section, and a twelve-question instrument that places an organisation on the timeline.

## The forms

- **The workshop** (→ 1830, individual): You own your tools and your output
- **The factory** (1830–1870, collective): Under one roof, and the roof is owned
- **The tycoon** (1870–1920, individual): One will, integrated end to end
- **The corporation** (1920–1980, collective): The visible hand
- **The founder** (1980–2010, individual): One person commands corporate-scale resources again
- **The platform** (2010–2023, collective): The market itself becomes the asset
- **The operator** (2023–2026, individual): A department's output from one desk
- **The network** (2026 →, collective): Own your data, swarm, vote, run several strategies
- **?** (?, individual): When coordination is free, what is scarce?

## The mechanism

Coase (1937): a firm exists to avoid the costs of using the market, and grows only while organising one more activity inside costs less than buying it outside. The boundary of the firm sits where those two costs meet. Every era in this timeline moved one side of that comparison — steam and management made the inside cheaper, the internet made the market cheaper, AI is making production inside a small group cheaper. A network forms when coordinating between independent parties becomes cheaper than coordinating inside a hierarchy. Forms alternate between individual and collective.

## Counter-forces

The app states three things that could stop the network form: a gatekeeper owning the coordination layer, voting participation that never materialises (documented in DAO governance), and the absence of a party who can be held liable.

## Published placements

Organisations publish their placement as a public record under the key firm.map.entry in their own namespace. Read one with AIMEAT.data.getPublic(ownerGaii, 'firm.map.entry'); list them with GET /v1/memory/discover?prefix=firm.map.

Current distribution:
- no published entries yet

## Data

A visitor's own answers stay private under firm.assessment and are never published. Only the placement, three axis scores, a chosen label, size and industry go into a map entry, and only when the owner explicitly publishes it.


> **AI provenance** — AI-generated (anthropic/claude-opus-5), no human editorial review, 2026-08-08T09:59:32.350Z · record: https://aimeat.io/v1/provenance/ac7d17d5-aff1-46fa-8363-1c409ada4632


## Agent affordances

- Act — WebMCP tool listing for this app: https://aimeat.io/v1/apps/happydude500001/the-firm.html/webmcp
- Learn — skills bound to this app: https://aimeat.io/v1/apps/happydude500001/the-firm.html/skills
- App catalog on this node (this app: happydude500001/the-firm.html): https://aimeat.io/app-catalog.html
- Register an agent on this node (RFC 8628 device flow): https://aimeat.io/auth.md