Default charter

Default charter

ATP ships with a global default charter at ~/.claude/skills/team/CHARTER.md. Projects can ratify it as-is or override it with .claude/agentic-team-charter.md. This page annotates the default charter and provides a checklist for ratifying a project-local version.

Global default charter summary

The global charter is safe to ratify when a project has not yet written its own charter. It defines the baseline guardrails and decision rights.

Scope

The charter governs agentic teams using ATP with eden-memory as the durable memory substrate.

Default active roles

Role	Purpose
Dispatcher	Decides what to build and delegates goals.
Researcher	Investigates, evaluates, and reports options.
Builder	Implements and tests the chosen approach.
Verifier	Reviews outputs for correctness, safety, and charter compliance.
Archivist	Records goal lifecycle data and manages memory hygiene.

Runtime is not active by default. It requires explicit project-local charter authorisation before it may operate on anything beyond local development tools. When authorised, routine commit/push of verified changes is within normal scope and does not require per-action user approval.

Decision rights

• Task ownership: Dispatcher assigns; owning role decides implementation details within scope.
• Tooling / dependencies: Researcher recommends; Builder decides; Verifier vetoes risky choices.
• Deploy timing: Verifier must approve; Runtime executes only if authorised.
• Verification verdict: Verifier owns final green/red judgement.
• Charter changes: Require re-ratification by the project owner or Founders’ Circle.

Escalation path

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.

Guardrails

• Secrets must never be stored in eden-memory.
• Runtime may not touch production systems without explicit charter authorisation.
• Every goal must end in either a hand-off/closure record or an escalation record.
• Charter changes require re-ratification.
• Non-trivial changes require a feature branch.
• Merges into the default branch must be non-fast-forward merge commits that preserve both parent SHAs.
• Force-pushing the default branch is prohibited.

Branch discipline

Projects ratifying this charter keep the default branch protected unless a project-local charter overrides these rules:

1. Feature branches for non-trivial work. Any change touching more than one file, altering behaviour, or dispatched as build or run must be developed on a feature branch.
2. Trivial fixes only on the default branch. Single-line corrections may be committed directly.
3. Non-fast-forward merge commits. Merges into the default branch must create a merge commit with a descriptive conventional-commit message.
4. Record both parent SHAs. Runtime records the feature-branch SHA and the previous default-branch SHA in the merge action record.
5. No force-push. Force-pushing the default branch is never permitted.
6. Runtime authority. Runtime is the only role that may create merge commits and push to the default branch, and only after a green Verifier verdict.

Ratification and version control

• Ratified when /team-charter stores a charter_ratification record in eden-memory.
• Version is the short SHA-256 hash of the charter content.
• Amendments follow: propose → review → re-ratify → archive previous version.
• The Archivist owns the amendment log.

Retirement

A team retires by:

1. Archiving the ratification record.
2. Marking eden-memory team records as team_retired.
3. Removing local agent/command files only after archival is verified.

Project-local charter template

The installer copies the project-local template to .claude/agentic-team-charter.md. The template is based on the global charter but adds placeholders for project identity and branch-specific values.

Key sections in the template:

Section	Purpose
Identity	Project name, path, and purpose statement.
Mission	One-sentence mission.
Boundaries	Hard guardrails, including the no-secrets rule and Runtime gating.
Roles/seats	Active roles and whether Runtime is gated.
Decision rights	Who decides routing, implementation, verdicts, live ops, and user overrides.
Escalation paths	Chain from owning role up to founders.
Branch discipline	Feature-branch rules, merge-commit style, Runtime authority.
Interfaces and dependencies	eden-memory path, global skill path, project-local skill override.
Runbooks and skills owned	Files the Archivist should maintain.
Status cadence	How often to run /team-status.
Retirement condition	How to stop using ATP for this project.

Ratification checklist

Before running /team-charter, confirm each item below.

• The charter file exists at .claude/agentic-team-charter.md (or global fallback is intentional).
• <PROJECT_NAME> and <PROJECT_PATH> placeholders are replaced.
• The mission statement is project-specific and not the template example.
• Boundaries explicitly forbid destructive live operations without authorisation.
• Boundaries forbid storing secrets in eden-memory or conversation logs.
• Roles in .claude/agentic-team-config.yaml match the active roles in the charter.
• Runtime is either omitted, explicitly gated, or explicitly authorised with scope limits.
• Branch discipline states the default branch name.
• Escalation paths name real people, roles, or channels for the project.
• Retirement condition is described.

If any item is unchecked, /team-charter will likely report no-proceed. Edit the charter and run it again.

Scope resolution

When both global and project-local files exist, the project-local versions win:

1. Project-local charter overrides global charter.
2. Project-local agent definitions override global agents.
3. Project-local skill overrides global skill.
4. 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 ratification.
• Charter anatomy — explains each section in depth.
• Record kinds — the charter_ratification record produced by /team-charter.