About
Private by design,
yours by default.
Clear Box is the mission-driven organization behind public-good infrastructure and an open attribution framework for crediting human and AI work. Learn who we are, what keeps us open, and where to continue the conversation.
Transparent to you
How the tools stay free
Public-good software is no good behind a paywall or restrictive licenses under proprietary control. We publish our tools in the open and build a business around helping people optimize how they work and learn.
We charge for services, not products. We're a mission-driven for-profit and transparent about how we sustain the organization through custom design, training, technical support, advising, speaking engagements, and other mission-aligned work.
Our plan for what we build
We maintain DARP and hold the commonFrame trademark today. Neither should stay here.
What DARP becomes shouldn't be ours to decide alone, and the commonFrame name belongs with an independent body to guarantee its core remains open. With that in mind, we've incorporated Clear Box Commons as a North Carolina nonprofit, and we're recruiting values-aligned board members to steward DARP and protect commonFrame's infrastructure.
Get involved
We're looking for people with strong opinions and relevant expertise to shape what we build and teach in the open for transparent work with AI.
Focus groups on AI literacy. We're creating the open tools and companion curriculum for local-first learning. What knowledge and skills do AI-ready graduates need to thrive in today's workforce?
A working group for honest AI attribution. We're developing DARP, a layered attribution framework for crediting both AI and human contributions to a work. How can we move past blanket AI disclosure statements into meaningful provenance?
Dates & Times TBA. In the meantime, sign up for updates from Clear Box.
The people
Chris Macek
Co-Founder
Chris is a systems architect who builds open tools, inspectable workflows, and local-first infrastructure for Clear Box. As an audio engineer of over 20 years, he frequently found himself facilitating the creative process and gained a deep understanding of the many layers in how work gets imagined, made, refined, and readied for release. DARP, commonllama, and commonFrame represent his lived experience of that process and how he envisions work being created and attributed in the future, whether by people, AI, or both.
Victoria Brame
Co-Founder
Victoria is an open education advocate who leads outreach, designs open learning materials, oversees knowledge management and documentation, and maintains the open-source repositories at Clear Box. Over a decade of public service in secondary education, academic librarianship, and the nonprofit sector exposed how often access to knowledge is fenced off by paywalls or paid for with personal data. As AI becomes part of everyday learning and working, she remains committed to advancing information literacy, critical evaluation, and learner sovereignty.
Connect with us
Reach out at hello@clrbx.org, and we'll get back to you soon.
Typically within two business days, Monday–Friday