# Managed Holon

A **Managed Holon** is a holon whose internal operations—tasks, roles, communication, and day-to-day coordination—are facilitated through an active manager. In the current Holons stack that manager is typically the [HolonsBot](/software/holonsbot.md) running inside a Telegram group, but the same pattern applies to any holon where coordination is mediated by a shared tool rather than left to ad-hoc conversation.

Where a Splitter Holon governs **flow of resources**, a Managed Holon governs **flow of work and attention**.

## What "managed" means here

A Managed Holon has at least the following elements explicitly tracked, rather than living in chat history or human memory:

* **Purpose** — a stated reason for the holon to exist, visible to every member.
* **Roles** — defined functions (e.g. `cook`, `gardener`, `facilitator`) that members can hold.
* **Tasks** — open commitments, completed actions, and their history.
* **Recognition** — appreciations and contribution points that update reputation over time.
* **Membership** — a clear boundary of who is in the holon and at what level of participation.

The manager (HolonsBot or equivalent) is what keeps these elements coherent without requiring a human administrator to act as a bottleneck.

## How it works in practice

A typical Managed Holon on Telegram is set up by following [Setting up your holonic organization](/daos/setting-up-your-holonic-organization.md):

1. Create a group chat for the holon and add the bot as an administrator.
2. Declare the holon's purpose so every new member sees it.
3. Use commands such as `/task`, `/setroles`, `/assignroles`, `/appreciate`, and `/facilitate` to make ongoing coordination explicit.
4. Federate with sibling holons via `/federate` to participate in larger structures.

Members interact with the holon through everyday chat; the bot quietly captures the structure—who committed to what, who recognized whom, what the current role distribution looks like—and exposes it through commands like `/tasks`, `/status`, `/board`, and `/dashboard`.

See the full [HolonsBot commands](/software/holonsbot/holonsbot-commands.md) reference for the available verbs.

## When to use a Managed Holon

Choose this flavor when:

* The group is already coordinating through chat and wants structure without leaving the tool they use.
* Roles, tasks, and contributions need to be **legible** to everyone, not just to a coordinator.
* The holon will eventually need to compose with other flavors—for example, feeding a [Splitter Holon](/software/holons-types-flavor/splitter-holon.md) with contribution data, or layering an [Appreciative Holon](/software/holons-types-flavor/appreciative-holon.md) value system on top.

A Managed Holon is often the **starting point**: once a group's coordination is captured in a manager, it becomes practical to add splitter logic, zone membership, or appreciation-weighted value equations on top of the same data.


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