{
  "id": "we-built-this.maker-claim",
  "term": "we built this",
  "sense": "maker-claim",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 19,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A collective self reading a current thing as made by its own past work, so the walls on it read as its own to set.",
  "folk_gloss": "a claim that a group made something and so has the right to decide about it",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "read.information",
      "current.present",
      "make.verb",
      "past.temporal",
      "work.effort",
      "wall.range-end",
      "set.fix",
      "narrative.self-story",
      "agency.capacity",
      "self-model.reflexive"
    ],
    "interaction": "The narrative traces a current thing back to the group's labour; making is then read as a title, so others setting walls on the thing read as setting walls on the group's own window.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "ownership read from past making",
      "others' rules on the thing heard as rules on the self",
      "a claim of agency over a shared outcome"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "founding-fathers.origin",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "founders hand down walls from a few; this claims the thing for all who worked on it"
    },
    {
      "id": "agency.capacity",
      "type": "is-a",
      "note": "agency claimed over a thing on the ground of having made it"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "we built this"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-we-built-this.maker-claim"
}