Open Arsenal

The Future of Compensation Design.

CompDesigner is an open-source specification for an AI-driven compensation design and optimization system built around a simple premise: compensation should be designed, not merely calculated. It provides a framework for creating compensation packages that consider salary, bonuses, benefits, reimbursements, retirement and wealth programs, equity, incentives, employee preferences, employer costs, and applicable legal requirements as parts of one interconnected system.

The system makes lawful tax minimization a primary optimization objective while maximizing the employee’s after-tax economic value. CompDesigner evaluates federal, state, and local tax consequences alongside benefit eligibility, payroll obligations, compensation classifications, liquidity, long-term wealth, and employer costs. It can compare alternative compensation structures to identify where every compensation dollar can create greater economic value without relying on concealment, mischaracterization, fabricated eligibility, sham transactions, or unsupported tax positions.

CompDesigner is designed around transparency, traceability, and continuous review. Recommendations can be supported by applicable legal authorities, calculations, assumptions, eligibility requirements, risk assessments, and version histories. Its architecture includes tax law change detection, stress testing, AI legal peer review, compensation equity analysis, audit trails, and human review controls so that recommendations can be reevaluated as laws, employee circumstances, employer objectives, or jurisdictions change.

CompDesigner represents a broader vision for the future of employment economics: transforming compensation from a static payroll expense into an intelligent optimization system. By bringing compensation, taxation, benefits, wealth building, employee choice, employer economics, and compliance into a unified design framework, CompDesigner aims to help employers create more efficient compensation programs while helping employees capture more of the economic value they earn.

This specification is released under the AGPL-3.0+ and is free to use with required Section 7 attribution. Attribution-free deployment is available through a Specification Branding License, with fees based on use and deployment scope.