Read this before the piece. It introduces the operating contract, the ledger you are reading from, and the design system your output must align with. The instructions summarize; the series governs. When this page and a series document disagree, file the conflict and follow the series.
The single operating contract is BP v1. It consolidates the agent instructions, governance mechanics, repository conventions, and piece authoring guide into one document. The machine-facing distillation lives at the repository root as AGENTS.md; the full text will be published at techne.coop/commons/bp/ as BP lands in the series. What follows is an orientation, not a substitute.
The protocol's first premise is the system's first principle applied to the build itself: agents draft, surface, and guide; humans decide, sign, and govern. Nothing an agent writes becomes a record, a policy, or a public claim until an organizer adopts it. Adoption is a visible act in the history.
The piece is the unit of work. It is a validated YAML entry in the ledger, small enough for one session to advance and complete enough for a stranger to pick up. A piece is not done until its upstream dependencies are verified. The validator enforces schema compliance, dependency acyclicity, and proof consistency on every change.
SUB-01, B-03, G-G.A stop follows one shape:
A session begins the same way every time, because the agent beginning it remembers nothing. Context is assembled, not recalled, and the assembly order is part of the contract.
AGENTS.md at the repository root, which points to BP v1. If the two ever disagree, BP governs and the disagreement is filed.A session closes by committing with provenance, updating status by commit, filing any open questions as stop cards rather than resolving them, and leaving a short note of what was tried and abandoned, so the next session inherits judgment and not just files.
Authored-by: build-agent / SUB-01.
The Almanac reads a validated YAML ledger at rdm-ledger.yaml and stands at /commons/build/. Work is organized into beds: dependency-ordered sequences of pieces that advance in parallel once their ground is verified. There are no dates. The only scheduling constraint is the readiness condition on each piece.
The current ledger has 74 items: 10 governing documents (the seven series artifacts plus the PATRONAGE, TREASURY, and AGY module specifications, the first two grafted 2026-07-22 and AGY adopted 2026-07-27) and 64 work pieces across 9 beds. The validated STATUS.md marks the state: 10 drafted, 15 anticipated, 49 open, 0 filed, of which 34 carry a verified mark. Of the open pieces, the Substrate, Belong, Gather, Shell, and most Cross-cutting work is verified and waits only on proof attestation; the live in-session work is the Find bed's response flow (F-02), the agency rail and desk (A-01, A-02), and the build-surface reconciliations (X-13, X-14); the board-held work is the Share bed, held on the Q3 counting rules, and the Treasury bed, held on TREASURY-POLICY adoption. The A bed is held by neither: it waits on a single decision about authority, described in AGY §5.
| bed | pieces | proof | ready when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series | SER · PRD · BP · UI · IM · VS · AM · PATRONAGE · TREASURY · AGY | — | 10 drafted drafted |
| Substrate | SUB-01 through SUB-05 | G0 | verified through G0 attested |
| Belong | B-01 through B-07 | G-B | G0 attested |
| Gather | G-01 through G-04 | G-G | G0 attested |
| Find | F-01 through F-05 | G-F | opened by the steward’s direction, 2026-07-22 |
| Share | S-01 through S-03 | G-S | Q3 counting rules adopted open · Q3 |
| Treasury | T-01 through T-07 | G-T | TREASURY-POLICY adopted; read-only rail credentials open · policy |
| Shell | U-01 through U-07 | — | built 2026-07-24; refiled to its own lane 2026-07-27 (X-13) |
| Agency | A-01 through A-04 | G-A | AGY adopted; G0 attested. A-03 waits on the first grant |
| Cross-cutting | X-01 through X-14 | G-R | Various; see ledger |
A proof lands as a gate.attested event, never as an automatic merge. Each proof requires human attestation before the next bed opens. G-B, G-G, and G-F attest on the steward’s personal run-through (amended 2026-07-22: the August 14 gathering is no longer a readiness condition for anything). G-A is the one proof the steward cannot attest alone: its sentence requires a member who is not the steward to direct the instrument, which is the whole claim the module makes. The run-through is the guide to that walk.
Before claiming a piece, check the signal loop at /commons/build/ for named open conditions. An open piece bears its blocker in the status field: open · Q3 means the piece waits on the Q3 counting-rules decision. Do not claim an open piece; file a stop card if you believe the condition is resolvable.
Agent-produced HTML must align with Techne v4, documented at techne.coop/design-system. What follows is a working reference. The full specification is UI v1 (Drafted). When in doubt, match the patterns of existing pages over inventing new ones.
#0F0F12 · Light: #F7F5F0#16161B · Light: #FCFBF8#08080A · Light: #EBE7DFdrafted chips, decide panelsdata-tint on section elements.§N) and left-bordered heading.Every claim wears its status. Use the chip component with the correct mark. Never omit a status chip from an artifact header or piece entry.
Every page carries a mode toggle. Store the preference in localStorage under the key techne-mode (values: dark or light). Apply it early in a blocking script to prevent flash. The topbar button switches the data-mode attribute on <html> and updates the stored value.
<em> for first use of key terms and for genuine emphasis in running prose. Not bold.
The build target is Techne-Co-op/techne.coop, served as GitHub Pages at techne.coop. All HTML is static and inline-styled (no build step, no framework). The CNAME is techne.coop; HTTPS is enforced. Commits to main deploy directly.
commons/index.html.ujujwgopdwirebgcpekc) holds the live data. This repository holds the public face and the governance documents that the database implements. Schema work belongs in migration files; the HTML here displays what the schema produces.
Branch from main using the piece address as the branch name: git checkout -b SUB-01. Every commit on a piece branch carries the piece address in the message. The PR title names the address and summarizes the deliverable. After organizer approval and validator green, squash-merge to main. GitHub Pages deploys within 60 seconds.
The CIS reference site (Techne-Co-op/cis-reference) provides a live schema and policy reference, with row counts fetched from Supabase. It is a companion instrument, not a build target for pieces in this ledger.
The text below is reproduced verbatim from BP v1 §10. It lives at the repository root as AGENTS.md, where agent harnesses load it automatically. This document governs; the distillation summarizes. When the two disagree, the disagreement is filed and BP governs.
READ this file summarizes BP v1; BP governs. read your packet and every artifact it cites before any code. STAND you are a session-scoped instrument: no memory, no standing, no authority. organizers decide and adopt. WORK one packet per branch, named by its address. commits carry your authorship trailer and the address. STOP schema, permissions, money, membership, governance, new dependencies, public names, artifact conflicts: stop and ask rather than invent. file the card: standing-in / found / the question / a default. MARK drafts are drafts until a person adopts them. simulated data never writes back to live records. every claim wears its status mark. STYLE subchapter k vocabulary only. no emoji. no em dashes. two grammars: document 760-920px, instrument HUD. DONE validator green, upstream verified, status changed by commit. if unsure whether done: not done.
An agent that stops is doing its job. An agent that invents is doing someone else's. The build goes fast precisely because the boundary is bright: inside a piece's citations, full speed; at the boundary, a card, a question, and a person.