michaelfrancoodev/Mgao

One load of ore, from the pit to the payout, with every share showing its working. A WebMCP-native ledger for small-scale gold mining loads in Tanzania — record costs by voice, and let the app (never the agent) compute the split. # Mgao A record-keeping and payout tool for small-scale gold mining — built around Geita, Tanzania, for anyone actually in that trade: the miner working the pit, the financier who fronted the money, the trader who buys the output, and everyone else standing around a load when it finally sells. Built for OpenAI's WebMCP Challenge, August 2026. MIT licensed. *Mgao* is Swahili for the division of a thing among the people entitled to it. --- ## Who this is for Small-scale and artisanal gold mining in Geita — and places like it — runs on the same handful of roles, on almost every load: - **The miners** who hold a share of what a load produces. - **A financier (mdhamini)** who fronts money for milling, fuel, or food, and expects it back before anyone's share is divided. - **Workers** who draw advances against their own share while the work is still going. - **A trader or buyer (mfanyabiashara)** who weighs the gold and pays for it, and whose figures every share downstream depends on. - **Whoever is doing the dividing** — often unpaid, always the one blamed when the numbers don't add up. If any of that describes you, this is built for you. It isn't specific to one mine, one pit, or one group — it's built around how a load of ore actually moves through small-scale mining, wherever that's happening. ## The actual problem The record for almost all of this is a paper notebook, or nothing at all, and it fails in the same specific ways everywhere: 1. **It's paper-based, and paper doesn't survive fieldwork.** Rain, dust, a torn page, a book left at the mill. When it's gone, the record of weeks of work goes with it. 2. **Costs are written down later, from memory, or not at all.** A small cost — food, a boda ride, a spare part — feels too small to note in the moment. Ten dropped costs is somebody's entire share. 3. **The mahesabu get disputed, and there's no way to settle it.** A notebook shows a total, never how the total was reached. Someone who thinks they were short- …