Ideal Consumption
Resource usage, scored honestly, one domain at a time.
Almost every purchase hides the thing you would actually want to know. Who made it, whether they were glad to, what happened to the money, and whether the alternative you did not see was better. Ideal Consumption is an EvoBioSys exploration of what it takes to put that back on the shelf label.
It is deliberately built domain by domain rather than as one universal score. Groceries came first because the decision repeats weekly and the supply chains are comparatively well documented. Clothes come second because they behave in the opposite way, and that difference turned out to be the interesting part.
The parts
Ideal Food, the app
app, liveThe parent holon of groceries. Meals composed from scored ingredients, a weekly plan that turns into a shopping list, and that list handed to Ideal Groceries through the shared query port rather than scoring anything twice. Sending a plan to somebody else is a permissioned act, not a link.
A meal holding one unestablished ingredient does not get a confident score. It reports how much of itself is actually known.
Ideal Clothing, the app
app, liveA wardrobe where every measurement carries how it was established. A value the device measured and a value read off a label are visibly different things, and a garment nobody has measured gets no fit verdict at all. Garments circulate to people you have a vouch path to, and a garment that works can be marked as a reference and found again, the same model in the same size, with its condition checked against yours.
Offers are shown as paths, never as a number. Who vouched for whom, and whether that vouch still stands.
Ideal Leisure, the app
app, liveDeals for leisure on the same back end: Hofer thermal weekends, the Steiermark-Card and a dozen thermal baths reached by train, each offer decomposed into the requirements it consumes and scored against your weights. Three nudges set offers aside with the reason on the line, and every one stays a click from being shown.
A source that stops matching its declared expectations reports broken with its last prices struck through; it never looks like a quiet day with no deals.
Ideal Groceries
liveGroceries scored against values you weight yourself: climate, fairness, health, price, ownership. Provenance chains traced back from the shelf, with every stage that could not be established marked as not established. First use case: Vienna.
Groceries are consumed. Once eaten, the decision is spent and the only thing that carries forward is the pattern of buying.
Ideal Clothes Shopping
in designFit, colour and fabric quality for garments that will outlive several owners. Includes the type analysis module: seasonal colour typing from skin and hair, and cut from body proportion.
Clothes wear down slowly and stay re-buyable the whole time. So the design needs a circulation loop, not just a purchase scorer.
Garment Analysis Device
in designA stacked box a household can 3D print, borrow from a neighbourhood store, or receive as plain cardboard. It measures and assesses a garment, and hands back a pre-inventoried parcel.
The measuring half is tractable today. The folding half is an open hardware problem, and this project says so.
Doorstep Handoff
in designBox on the doorstep, collected by the postal service that already passes, listed with measured dimensions and a fabric score, resold locally, with the seller taking a cut.
The point is not another marketplace. It is pulling in the garments that would otherwise never get listed anywhere at all.
Prior Art
researchedA survey of 39 existing products, standards, regulations and services across resale platforms, fibre scanners, folding robotics, virtual try-on and doorstep collection. Every row carries its source tier and a confidence value.
The useful half is the list of gaps that survived checking. No resale platform measures a garment from a photo, and no open fabric quality score exists.
The questions each part gets asked
These are the evaluation angles the whole holon is built around. They are questions rather than metrics on purpose, because several of them have no honest number behind them yet.
Can the people who work there have passion, or at least pride, in the work?
And do we actually know that they enjoy it, or are we inferring it from a certification logo? Most labour claims on a product are about the absence of the worst outcomes, not the presence of a good one.
Is it a purely capitalist game where wealth begets more wealth?
Ownership structure decides where the surplus goes. A cooperative, a foundation-held firm and a listed company can sell an identical product and distribute the proceeds in completely different directions.
What is the relative alternative score?
An absolute rating is close to useless in a shop. The comparison that matters is against the other item on the same shelf, at the same moment, at a price you would actually pay.
Does it contribute to an honest epistemic commons?
A score is only worth having if its inputs are inspectable and its gaps are stated. Where something is not known, this project says so rather than substituting a plausible number.
Is it just marketing that the good guys need?
The uncomfortable possibility: perhaps the honest producers are not losing on substance, they are losing on reach. If so, a scorer is a distribution tool, not a research tool, and should be judged as one.
Why clothes are not groceries
The distinction that shaped the second holon. Groceries are consumed and clothes are not, and almost every design decision on the clothes side follows from that one line.
| Axis | Groceries | Clothes |
|---|---|---|
| What happens after purchase | Consumed. The item is gone within days. | Worn down over years. The item persists and stays usable. |
| Who else can want it | Nobody. Value ends at the first owner. | Anyone the size fits. Value transfers to a second, third and fourth owner. |
| Decision frequency | Weekly, dozens of items at a time, low deliberation per item. | Rare, one item at a time, high deliberation and high regret cost. |
| What the tool has to do | Score the purchase, at the shelf, fast. | Score the purchase, then keep the item circulating for as long as it holds up. |
| Where the leverage sits | Supply chain and shop choice. | Fit accuracy at purchase, and the friction of passing it on afterwards. |
Where this sits in the wider frame
Clothing is one of the nine essential physical human requirements, the standing EvoBioSys frame for what a person materially needs. The working practice recorded there is buying staples on trips, in the countries where they are made, with the rest delivered only when needed. That is a good pattern for someone who travels. It does not generalise, which is exactly why the second-hand route matters: regional collectives around second-hand goods are the version that works for people who stay put, and they improve community resilience as a side effect.