Capacity propagation is the core principle of the connection function. A healthy ecology should not depend on a few gifted, connected, or powerful nodes; it should become steadily better at letting one participant’s development increase what others can do.
Capacity should be able to propagate beyond its point of origin.
The distinction it rests on is decisive: distribution of product versus distribution of capacity. A song streamed to a hundred million passive listeners is enormous reach and almost no propagation; a teacher who trains a hundred students who then teach ten thousand more has propagated far more capacity from a far smaller start. So the healthier measure of any spread is not how many people received the thing but how many new capable participants exist afterward — spread that adds nodes, not only audience. When a capability travels, the test is whether people can use it, understand it, modify it, build on it, teach it, and make local versions, because each of those turns a recipient into a new source. Its depth is measured not by reach but by propagation depth, and it is the distribution-side complement to aliveness: aliveness ignites, capacity propagation spreads. See Connection.