Inventories

An inventory makes what a person or community can share easier to find. It is a catalog of things, separate from help requests and skills.

Private until shared

A personal item belongs to one member. It is visible only to that owner until they choose communities to share it with. Both the owner and viewer must currently be active members of a shared community. Leaving withdraws visibility; the saved sharing choices return on rejoining.

A community-owned item belongs to the community. Its active admins manage it, and active members can see it when available. The member who added it is its creator, not its owner.

Availability

An unavailable item stays in its manager's inventory but is hidden from other members. For a personal item, the manager is its owner. For community property, managers are active admins. Authorization follows current membership, so an old login token cannot preserve removed access.

Directed requests

An Ask to borrow on an item creates a private request addressed to the owner, or to the owning community's current active admins. Only the requester, current recipients and existing match participants can read it. It never appears in browse lists, community open asks, pulse or exports. Participants keep their private mark-done and feedback action items. The recipient's Asked of you inbox makes the request actionable before an offer exists.

Deleting a recipient or community never turns the request public. It stays private, and only the requester and existing match participants retain their own exchange history when the target disappears. An admin who loses their role loses access to new community asks immediately; being demoted does not prevent them finishing an exchange they already joined.

Sending again reuses your existing open ask for that item, with its original terms. A temporary notification outage does not discard a saved ask; delivery retries without repeating notifications.

Borrowing uses normal acceptance, messaging, completion and karma. The catalog does not reserve items, track physical loans or returns, add photos, or change skill-based matching.

See Sharing Your Things for the workflow.