What OHM is not

It's usually quicker to rule something out than to rule it in. Here is what OHM deliberately doesn't do, and what it doesn't do yet — the difference matters.

Not a marketplace

OHM doesn't take orders, quote prices, process payments, or take a cut. It has no opinion about what you should pay or who you should choose.

It tells you which workshops can build your design and why each one qualifies. The conversation after that is between you and them, on whatever terms you agree. We aren't a party to it and don't want to be.

Not a design tool

OHM doesn't help you design anything. No CAD, no simulation, no version control for your files. It reads designs that already exist.

Not a certification body

OHM doesn't vet workshops, verify claims, or grant anyone a quality badge. A facility describing itself as capable is a claim by that facility, not an endorsement by us.

There is deliberately no global "this is my workshop" button, either. In a network where every instance keeps its own records, a worldwide ownership flag would be a fiction the moment another instance disagreed. What exists instead is attribution, domain verification, and vouching between peers — trust that is traceable to somebody, rather than asserted by us.

Not a replacement for the directories it reads

OHM reads from existing maps and directories of workshops rather than trying to replace them. Those projects did the hard work of collecting that information and continue to maintain it. Where a space publishes its own details, those details belong to that space, hosted by them — OHM is a reader, not an owner.

See meet people where they already are.

Not a hosted service you have to depend on

The instance we run is a convenience. OHM is software you can run yourself, and the project is structured so that nobody — including us — sits in a position where they must be trusted.

Things that aren't built yet

These are different from the above. They're intended, not rejected.

Sending demand through the network. OHM is built to support demand flowing across a distributed network of producers — a request finding capacity wherever capacity exists. That needs a much denser network than exists today, or a specific event that forces it. It's designed for, not available.

Requests for quotation. Generating the paperwork to approach matched workshops exists in the system but isn't yet wired into the web app.

Fine-grained capability search. Today you can search by process and place. You cannot yet ask for a laser cutter that takes 3 mm aluminium — which is frequently the question that actually matters. That depends less on our code than on workshops describing themselves in that much detail.

What's built and what isn't is generated automatically from the codebase, so it is the reliable answer to this question — more reliable than this page, which is written by hand and could fall behind.