The competency framework for the creator era
CreaComp maps digital creative literacy: the body of knowledge that allows a person to critically receive, understand, imagine, make, publish and capitalise on content and projects in digital environments.
CreaComp 1.0 — 2026 edition · Maxime Hébert · CC BY-SA 4.0
01 The object
A framework for digital creative literacy
Someone creating online draws on knowledge that several frameworks already describe, but separately. What is missing is not one more competence: it is the model that holds them together.
Creation has become a structuring dimension of digital environments. Recommendation algorithms, content production, generative artificial intelligence, digital entrepreneurship: people's capacity to understand these mechanisms and to produce value through them now conditions their economic, cultural and civic autonomy.
That capacity is not uncharted ground. DigComp describes the digital competence of citizens, EntreComp entrepreneurial competence, media and information literacy critical reception, and research on creativity the act of inventing. Each of these frameworks illuminates one side of it; none brings them together in a single model.
This is where CreaComp comes in: an integrated framework describing a person's capacity to understand digital environments, to create in them intentionally, to turn ideas into finished work, to engage with communities and to build lasting autonomy around what they make. It is built around a single question:
What is a person actually able to do in digital environments, and what value are they able to create there?
02 The architecture
How the framework is organised
Four numbers describe its whole structure. Each one names something precise.
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7
domains
Fields of action, named with verbs.
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28
competencies
Four per domain.
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3
transversal threads
They run through all seven domains.
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124
observable descriptors
Four levels applied to each of the 31 entries.
Seven domains of action
Each domain gathers four competencies. Hover one to reveal what it contains.
- GATHER Receiving, evaluating and organising information and digital cultures Search and source information Assess reliability and detect manipulation Organise your monitoring and information diet Read digital cultures and codes
- ANALYSE Understanding the systems that distribute, measure and generate content Understand recommendation algorithms Understand the platform and attention economy Read and interpret data Understand artificial-intelligence systems
- CREATE Imagining, conceiving and giving a singular form to an intention Generate and develop ideas Build a voice and a narrative identity Master narrative Design for an audience
- MAKE Producing, augmenting and publishing with a conscious level of quality Produce recorded content Speak live Create with artificial intelligence Systematise production and publishing
- COLLABORATE Creating with others and building relationships of trust Co-create in a team Credit and respect the rights of others Interact and conduct yourself online Build and nurture a community
- VENTURE Turning an idea into a project that exists Frame and pitch a creative project Prototype, test, iterate Manage resources and priorities Take risks and bounce back
- MONETISE Turning a creative project into an economy and into durable assets Understand and choose revenue models Protect and capitalise on intellectual property Negotiate and run your activity Build platform-independent assets
Four levels — postures, not ages
The same four levels apply identically to all thirty-one entries, and that is what gives the framework its internal coherence. The educational landmarks are indicative only.
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N1
Discovery
I practise with guidance: instructions, a model or support.
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N2
Application
I practise on my own in familiar situations.
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N3
Adaptation
I adapt and arbitrate in complex or unfamiliar situations.
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N4
Orchestration
I design systems, combine several competences and decide under uncertainty.
Calibration golden rule: every Discovery-level descriptor is achievable by a lower-secondary student equipped with nothing more than a smartphone. None presupposes professional equipment, an existing audience or an established activity.
03 One entry
What a competency looks like
Here is a real entry, unfolded at both ends. The other thirty have exactly the same shape.
1.2 GATHER
Assess reliability and detect manipulation
Judging the credibility of a piece of content, spotting disinformation, synthetic content and influence techniques. This is the core of intellectual hygiene: the ability to suspend judgement, to verify before sharing, and to recognise the mechanisms — cognitive and rhetorical — by which we are made to believe or to act.
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N1 Discovery
- Observable descriptor
- Is able to explain why a piece of content may be false or misleading, and to name at least two indicators of unreliability.
- Evidence of assessment
- Analyse three pieces of content, one of them misleading, and justify the judgement made on each.
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N4 Orchestration
- Observable descriptor
- Is able to design a complete verification scheme and to settle ambiguous cases, where signals of reliability contradict one another.
- Evidence of assessment
- Design a verification scheme and document it across ten real cases, including three ambiguous ones with the decision taken.
04 Scope and limits
What the framework does, and what it does not
Five boundaries, stated as choices rather than reservations.
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A map
Not a curriculum
It describes knowledge and makes it assessable. It prescribes no pathway, no method and no content.
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A territory where each person draws their own profile
Not a baseline everyone must master
No hierarchy between domains, no imposed order of progression. Nobody is expected to master the whole.
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Evidence of creation
No quizzes, no overall grade
A competency is validated through a real artefact, together with a short reflective analysis.
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Capacities of judgement
Not a list of software
No descriptor names a tool. Tools are replaced; judgement remains.
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A model under validation
Not an already validated framework
The theoretical proposal is published; its empirical validation is still to be carried out. The framework says which of the two it is.
Why this framework
Value has moved
Generative artificial intelligence has collapsed the cost of production: a competent text, a clean visual, an edited video are becoming universally accessible. What becomes ordinary loses its value, and value moves towards both ends of the creative chain.
That displacement is what justifies the architecture of the framework: the eye and the relationship weigh as much as making itself. Existing frameworks describe one end or the other; CreaComp holds both in a single model, with the same grammar of levels and the same evidence of assessment.
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Upstream
The eye
Knowing what to create, why, and from which point of view.
Gather · Analyse · Create
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Midstream
Making
Producing a correct form. Cost collapsed, value diluted.
Make
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Downstream
The relationship
Trust, community, and the assets you actually own.
Collaborate · Venture · Monetise
Uses
Who is this framework for?
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Teachers
Anchor a progression in observable descriptors rather than in intentions, from lower secondary to higher education.
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Training providers
Build a legible offer aligned with a public framework, and assess it through evidence of creation.
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Creators and freelancers
Locate your practice on a map and identify your blind spots.
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Institutions and researchers
Work from an open, dated and citable framework, to support public policy or research.
A common good
CreaComp is published under a Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. You may reuse it, translate it, adapt it and embed it in your own programmes, provided you credit its origin and share your adaptations under the same terms.