We approach the problem of defining curvature on a graph by attempting to attach a ‘best-fit polytope’ to each vertex, or more precisely what we refer to as a configured star. How this should be done depends upon the global structure of the graph which is reflected in its geometric spectrum. Mean curvature is the most natural curvature that arises in this context and corresponds to local liftings of the graph into a suitable Euclidean space. We discuss some examples.