These are our Framing Documents. They are the papers we steer by.
Every organization runs on something. Most run on things they never wrote down — unexamined defaults, borrowed norms, the quiet assumptions of whoever came before. We chose to write ours down. Not to hang them on a wall, but to have something to return to when the work gets hard, when care is in short supply, and when the world pushes us toward conformity, scarcity, and harm.
A framing document is not a rulebook. It is an orientation. It names what we believe, why we believe it, and how those beliefs are supposed to show up in practice. Read together, these nine documents are the frame around everything else Stimpunks makes — the glossary, the Why Sheets, the learning space, the mutual aid, the grants. Read one at a time, each is a compass for a different bearing: what we exist to do, what each of us promises, what we refuse, how we treat each other, and where we choose to stand.
Reframing is social change. Frames are the structures that shape what we see, what we seek, and what counts as a good or bad outcome. To change the frame is to change all of it. These documents are our reframing, held in the open so anyone can check our bearings against them — including us.
The Through-Line
These documents differ in register — some declarative, some first-person, some poetic, some procedural — but they share one spine. Broken systems, not broken people. The problem is never the person struggling to survive an environment that was not built for them. The problem is the environment.
Every framing document below turns on that claim and follows it somewhere specific. The Mission turns it into what we do. The Creed turns it into what each of us promises. The Manifesto turns it into what we demand. The Tenets, the Covenant, the Philosophy turn it into how we practice, how we treat each other, and how we decide. Interdependence and Edges name the two convictions everything else rests on: that our survival is bound up together, and that design is tested at the edges. Pull any thread and you arrive back at the same center — center the marginalized and the different, in service to all bodyminds.
The Documents
🏩 Mission
What we exist to do. Real help against the onslaught.
Stimpunks exists for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and Disabled people. We build accessible infrastructure and public tools that help our community live with dignity, challenge dehumanizing systems, and design environments that honor difference as strength. Created by and for neurodivergent and Disabled people, we provide mutual aid, creator grants, learning opportunities, human-centered research, and living wages. We presume competence. We believe in self-determination.
The Mission is direct about why direct support matters: staying alive is a lot of work for a Disabled person in an ableist society, and the most effective way to alleviate the barriers that stop people from thriving is to help people directly. The page also translates itself — an Easy Read version presents each mission statement one idea per line — and explains what mutual aid actually is: not charity, but a practice of taking responsibility for one another and building networks of reciprocity and communal autonomy.
Creed
What each of us promises. Written in the first person, because a creed only works when someone means it.
The Creed is structured in four movements — I know, I reframe, I center, I will. It knows that pluralism is our reality, that neurodiversity is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation, and that thriving is not an individual achievement but a collective process rooted in safety. It reframes out of the medical model and the pathology paradigm into the biopsychosocial model and the neurodiversity paradigm, and from deficit ideology to structural ideology. It centers the marginalized and the different, and edge cases, because edge cases are stress cases and design is tested at the edges.
Then it commits. I will never stop learning. I will communicate as much as possible, because communication is oxygen to an organization. I will presume competence and respect bodily autonomy and self-determination. I will build with, not for. I will default to open. I will make things that help people, and I will not make things that harm people. It is written in the first person singular on purpose: the “I” is not the organization speaking in a borrowed voice. It is each of us, individually, taking these commitments on as our own. When a Stimpunk reads it and nods, that nod is the creed activating.
Manifesto
What we demand. A protest of the notion that there is any correct way to live.
This is a manifesto that begins but will never end. It is a translation of one world into another, and a refusal of the idea that there is one right way to be a person. Its core declaration is blunt: we reject neuronormativity and demand the right to live and learn differently. From there it moves through the concepts that structure all of our work — pluralism, neurodiversity, accessibility, framing, centering, interdependence, care, disability justice, equity, inclusion, intersectionality, power, and belonging — stating each as a position rather than a hedge.
Human cognitive diversity exists for a reason; our differences are the genius — and the conscience — of our species. Accessibility is a collective process, and systems built for the most complex communicators are not niche solutions but blueprints for broad accessibility. Inclusion must begin where exclusion has been deepest. There is no path to equity that does not involve a direct confrontation with inequity. The Manifesto is where the framing documents raise their voice — anger expressed through precision, every line a demand rather than a request.
The Tenets of Stimpunks
Shared principles to return to when systems fail us. Tools for reflection, not rules to obey.
The Tenets are not rules to obey or beliefs to defend. They are shared principles we return to when systems fail us, when care is hard, and when the world asks us to disappear. They come from lived experience — of neurodivergence, disability, burnout, mutual aid, and survival inside structures not built for us. They exist to guide practice, not to police people. You don’t have to agree with all of them or adopt them wholesale.
Among them: authenticity is sacred; nothing is neutral; people are not the problem; care comes before compliance; interdependence over independence myths; design for real life, because edge cases are stress tests, not exceptions; rest is not a moral failure; lived experience is legitimate knowledge; default to open, not perfect; mutual aid is how we practice love; consent is ongoing; no one has to earn belonging; slowness is a valid pace; and clarity is kinder than niceness. This isn’t a religion of belief. It’s a practice of being human — together.
Covenant: Live Your Truth; Shred Some Gnar
How we treat each other. A shared promise, not a contract.
A covenant is not a contract. It is a shared promise — not made in isolation, but in relation to one another. The Stimpunks Covenant names the ways we agree to show up for each other, for the work, and for the community, so we can hold each other with clarity and care without relying on rules that erase context or demand conformity. It is grounded in the reality of living in a world not built for many of us, and it treats difference as something to be acknowledged, supported, and woven into shared practice rather than tolerated, fixed, or hidden.
In brief: we pledge to act in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community. We use prosocial principles, restorative practices, transformative justice, and an advice process. Don’t be TRAAAAASH. No proselytizing. Because we have different neurotypes with different communication styles, we assume good intention in the case of misunderstanding, and we tell our truths in such a way that others can tell theirs too. You can’t just open the door; you have to put out a welcome mat. The covenant isn’t only aspirational — it’s a way to evaluate environments in practice, and it is living, just like us.
Philosophy
How we decide. Compasses and stars — short lines that keep us aligned.
We steer by collected phrases. They’re compasses and stars — short lines that keep us aligned when systems push us toward conformity, scarcity, and harm. The Philosophy gathers them into a navigable map, organized into doors you can pick: Foundations (dignity, care, and human variation), Design & Systems (how harm gets built in), Education (learning as human practice), Work & Worth (survival under capitalism), and Justice & Culture (collective liberation). Grab a phrase, find its context, and follow the “Read Next” ladders to go deeper.
These phrases come from lived reality and research. They exist to name harm without blaming people, to design for real life instead of average myths, to build access infrastructure instead of gatekeeping, to center Disabled and neurodivergent voices as epistemic authority, and to keep the work aligned when things get noisy. They are not rules to follow blindly. They are points of orientation — a constellation we navigate by, a living framework that helps us make decisions, tell stories, and keep building toward a world where difference is honored.
🧭 Our Lens
How we make sense of things. The Philosophy, walked tier by tier.
Our Lens is how Stimpunks makes sense of autism, disability, access, and power. Where the Philosophy gathers our guiding phrases into a constellation, Our Lens walks that spine one tier at a time — each idea a compass, short and grounded in lived experience, that you can use to name what’s happening and design for real life. It isn’t meant to be read in order. Skim it. Pick a doorway. Follow what fits your moment.
The briefs build vertically through five tiers: Foundations (dignity and human variation), Systems & Design Lenses (how harm gets built in, and the replacement architecture we use instead), Education & Learning, Labor & Economics, and Justice & Culture. The arc runs dignity to design to learning to labor to liberation. Along the way it names the through-line plainly: systems that measure worth create burnout; systems that build access create capacity. Each brief links out to the fuller treatment, and the page grounds itself in the social model of disability, disability justice, and the human-rights framework of the CRPD. It is the working lens we hold up to everything else.
It Is Time to Celebrate Our Interdependence!
One of the two convictions everything rests on. Our survival is bound up together.
The notion of disability in our society is underscored by a bizarre conception of independence. This document rejects that conception and celebrates its opposite. Interdependence acknowledges that our survival is bound up together, that we are interconnected, and that what you do impacts others. It is the only way out of most of the most pressing issues we face — and collaboration is what lets us create genuinely safe spaces for Autistic and otherwise neurodivergent people. To face the challenges of the future, we’ll need the problem-solving abilities of different types of minds working together.
The page reaches for the image of woven cloth: a swatch of rainbow macramé that evokes our biopsychosocial complexity, our diversity, and the adaptive interdependence of body, mind, nature, and society. We are woven together — and our mutual entwinement must be careful, spacious, and supple, with no single knot tied too tight. Because we need stronger bonds, to hold each other together and to keep the world from falling apart.
Choosing the Margin: Design Is Tested at the Edges
The other conviction everything rests on. Where systems fail, and where new worlds emerge.
The world’s center is made for some people — neat categories, smooth timelines, predictable norms. But real human life happens on the edges: in the breaks, the mismatches, the overlaps, the textures that don’t fit standard grids. Edges are where systems fail to account for complexity, and where insight, resistance, and new worlds emerge. Disabled and neurodivergent people are always edge cases, and edge cases are stress cases. People don’t become edges by accident; they become edges because dominant systems weren’t built for their bodies, minds, or lives.
This document chooses the margin deliberately. It doesn’t smooth the edges out, ignore them, or pretend they don’t exist. It witnesses them, describes them, and learns from them — because those at the margins understand the most about how systems are actually structured, and because designing at the edges moves everyone forward. Innovation comes from adversity, and those of us at the margins have experienced the most. The edge isn’t a boundary that contains us; it’s a shape of experience that expands outward, fractal and alive. This is where Stimpunks stands.
What These Documents Are Not
They are not scripture. There is no test of orthodoxy, no membership gate, no requirement to agree with every line. You don’t have to adopt them wholesale. They’re tools — for reflection, solidarity, and collective care — and tools are meant to be picked up, used with judgment, and set down again.
They are not finished. These documents reflect what we hold and how we practice right now. They are living, just like us and just like the world we are building together. The Creed carries a version number. The Covenant says outright that it is not finished. They change as the community tells us what’s working and what isn’t, as our understanding deepens, as the work continues.
They are not decoration. We wrote them down so we could be held to them — by the community, and by each other. That’s what it means to steer by something. You have to be willing to check your heading against it, and to correct course when you’ve drifted.
These are the papers we steer by. Read them together and you have the frame. Read them one at a time and you have a compass for the bearing you need. Either way, they point to the same center: broken systems, not broken people — and a world built at the edges, in service to all bodyminds.