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Overview — HCS‑16 Flora Coordination

HCS‑16 defines coordination primitives for Flora accounts: multi‑member accounts built out of HCS‑15 Petals. Each Flora runs on three dedicated topics and exchanges a small set of standardized messages to initialize membership, coordinate transactions, and publish state.

This page explains the “why” and “how” before you touch code.

What HCS‑16 Solves​

  • Creates a predictable skeleton for multi‑member accounts on Hedera
  • Separates concerns across three topics so readers/indexers stay simple
  • Uses explicit, typed operations so flows are auditable and replayable

The Three Topics​

  • Communication Topic (CTopic): human/agent coordination and lifecycle messages
  • Transaction Topic (TTopic): transaction intents and proposals
  • State Topic (STopic): compact state updates (often paired with HCS‑17 hashes)

All topics use numeric‑enum memos per spec for consistent discovery by indexers.

Core Operations​

  • flora_create_request → flora_create_accepted → flora_created
  • tx_proposal (proposal for a scheduled tx or batched actions)
  • state_update (compact state change; often includes/aligns with HCS‑17)
  • flora_join_request → flora_join_vote → flora_join_accepted

Typical Lifecycle​

SDK Design​

  • Environment‑specific clients (Node/Browser) wrap the same base logic
  • All transactions are assembled in tx.ts (no JSON assembly in clients)
  • Browser flows use wallet signing (freezeWithSigner/executeWithSigner)

Continue with the Node or Browser guides for step‑by‑step flows.