Charter anatomy

Charter anatomy

A charter is the contract between you and the agentic team. It defines identity, boundaries, roles, decision rights, and escalation paths. The global charter is a safe default; a project-local charter overrides it.

Every charter must be ratified with /team-charter before the team proceeds. Ratification stores a charter_ratification record in eden-memory with a SHA-256 version hash of the charter content.

Sections

Identity

Who the project is and why it uses the protocol. Include the project path and a short purpose statement. This makes it clear which charter applies when multiple projects share the same global agent definitions.

Mission

A one-sentence mission statement. For example: “Ship observable, reversible changes safely while maintaining a durable decision trail in eden-memory.”

Boundaries

Hard guardrails. Common examples:

• No destructive actions on external or live systems without explicit authorisation.
• Runtime is limited to local development tools unless the charter says otherwise.
• Secrets, tokens, and credentials must never be stored in eden-memory or conversation logs.

Roles and seats

List the active roles. The default set is:

Role	Default seat
Dispatcher	Active
Researcher	Active
Builder	Active
Verifier	Active
Archivist	Active
Runtime	Gated

Runtime is available but requires explicit charter authorisation before acting on anything beyond local development tools.

Decision rights

Who can decide what:

• Dispatcher — routing and assignment decisions.
• Builder — implementation approach within the dispatched scope.
• Verifier — accept, reject, or request rework.
• Runtime — go/no-go on live operations.
• User — overrides any role decision.

Escalation paths

Define the chain when a goal is blocked or risky. The default path is:

1. Owning role → Dispatcher / Overseer within one status period.
2. Dispatcher → Anchor Operations Chair same day.
3. Chair → Founders’ Circle within 48 hours for guardrail or risk issues.
4. Final call by Founders’ Circle or project owner.

Interfaces and dependencies

• eden-memory (~/.eden-memory/default.db) is the durable substrate.
• The global protocol skill at ~/.claude/skills/team/SKILL.md and global charter at ~/.claude/skills/team/CHARTER.md provide fallback documentation and baseline guardrails.
• A project-local charter overrides the global charter for that project path.

Runbooks and skills owned

List the files the team maintains so the Archivist knows where reusable conventions live:

• .claude/skills/agentic-team-protocol/SKILL.md
• .claude/agents/*.md
• .claude/commands/*.md
• The charter itself

Status cadence

How often the team checks active goals. A common rule: run /team-status at the start of every session working on this project.

Retirement condition

How to stop using the protocol for the project. Typically: remove .claude/agentic-team-config.yaml and the project-local protocol files. Until then, the charter remains binding.

Version and amendments

• The charter version is a short SHA-256 hash of the file content.
• Changes follow: propose → review → re-ratify → archive the previous version.
• The Archivist owns the amendment log.

Default vs. project-local

Scope	File	Overrides
Global	~/.claude/skills/agentic-team-protocol/CHARTER.md	Nothing
Project-local	.claude/agentic-team-charter.md	Global charter

If a project has no agentic-team-config.yaml, the global skill is used and the global charter is ignored unless explicitly referenced.

See also

• Ratify a project charter — step-by-step charter ratification.
• Default charter — annotated global charter and ratification checklist.
• Run your first team goal — what to do after the charter is ratified.
• Slash commands — /team-charter reference.