Invitation and join

Four ways in. They differ enormously in build cost, and the PRD asks which is cheapest for a first release — so each card carries that answer rather than leaving it to a meeting.

Open question carried forward. The source PRD titles this section “which is easiest for MVP” and does not answer it. The recommendation below is this prototype's, not a decision.

Pick a path

A · Direct invite

Business already on the platform

Pick them from a list. The invite lands in their admin's notification centre and inbox. Accept, decline, or ignore.

Cheapest · recommended first

B · Email invite

Business not on the platform yet

Enter an address and company name. They get a branded invite, sign up, and membership activates when onboarding completes.

Costly · drags in onboarding

C · Invite link

Share in a group chat or newsletter

Generate a link with optional expiry, use cap and domain lock. Anyone using it raises a join request — never an automatic membership.

Moderate · needs abuse controls

D · Request to join

They find you

A business discovers the network in search, requests access, answers screening questions, and lands in the admin queue.

Moderate · needs discovery first

Direct invite

What happens next

Every path converges on the same state machine. The pending state is deliberately blind — that blindness is the whole trust argument.

PendingSees the name, description, rules and member count. Nothing else.

ApprovedMust acknowledge the network rules before anything opens up.

ActivePrompted straight into setting a sharing policy.

A pending business can see

Network name and description
Rules they would be agreeing to
How many members there are

A pending business cannot see

Any inventory
Who the other members are
Any price, anywhere

Declined businesses are notified and may not re-request for 30 days. That cooling-off is the only thing standing between an open network and a queue full of repeat applicants.

Guardrails

Control	Behaviour	What it prevents
Invitation expiry	Invites lapse after 15 days.	Stale invitations resurfacing into a network that has moved on.
Decline and block	An admin can refuse a network and stop all further invites from it.	One persistent network pestering a business indefinitely.
Daily rate limit	Caps invites sent per business per day.	Bulk invitation used as marketing.
Admin approval of member invites	Optional: every invite, including member-generated, needs an admin.	Membership drifting without the owner noticing.

Illustrative placeholder data, in-memory state. Nothing is sent.