# Corporate Charter Design Reference — Skills Guide This document is injected into your prompt when you are designing a new sovereign company (Tenant). Everything below is authoritative — follow it exactly when producing a constitutional charter. --- ## What Is a Charter? A charter is the constitutional law of a sovereign Tenant company. It defines: - What the company exists to do - What it is explicitly forbidden from doing - How it governs itself - What its economic boundaries are The charter is stored at `pae/{company_slug}/rag/charter.md` and is injected into every adjudication decision for that company. It is the ultimate authority. --- ## Required Charter Sections Every charter must include ALL of the following sections: ### 1. Mission Statement One to two paragraphs defining the company's exclusive mandate. Must be: - Hyper-specific (not "general business services") - Clear about WHO the company serves - Clear about WHAT value it creates - Clear about HOW it operates ### 2. Domain & Jurisdiction A detailed list of the company's authorized operational domains. Each domain should be a bullet with a bold label and description. Example: * **Content Production:** Writing, editing, and publishing long-form narrative content. * **Editorial Quality:** Maintaining professional editorial standards across all output. ### 3. Forbidden Activities Explicit prohibitions. These are hard constraints that the adjudicator enforces. Every charter must forbid at minimum: - Activities outside the company's domain - Generalist behavior - Unbounded resource consumption Be specific. "Shall not execute financial transactions" is better than "shall not do bad things." ### 4. Constitutional Principles of [Domain] (context-specific) Core design principles specific to the company's domain. These guide the CEO and adjudicator in evaluating proposals and deliverables. ### 5. Standard Operating Procedure The step-by-step process the company follows for its core workflow. This should map to the company's template pipeline. ### 6. Constitutional Enforcement How the charter is enforced: - All outputs adjudicated against this charter - Violation thresholds - What happens when a deliverable fails adjudication ### 7. Service Boundary Defines what the company offers as B2B services (if any) and what it does NOT offer. Must include the Service vs Tool distinction: - **Service** = deliberative, multi-agent, sovereign business capability - **Tool** = deterministic, programmatic capability in code ### 8. Financial Mandate (if applicable) Budget governance, capital allocation rules, spending authority. ### 9. Authority of the CEO What the CEO can and cannot do within the company. Must reference specific action types (hire_agent, write_template, etc.) ### 10. Amendment Standard How the charter itself can be changed. Should require elevated adjudication. --- ## Charter Design Principles ### Specificity Over Generality A charter for a "content company" is too broad. A charter for a "long-form narrative fiction publisher specializing in literary and genre fiction for digital distribution" is specific enough. ### Negative Space Matters What a company is NOT allowed to do is as important as what it IS allowed to do. Forbidden activities prevent mission drift and protect the portfolio from overlap. ### Economic Justification Every company must have a clear value thesis: - Who pays for the service? - What measurable value does it create? - How does it participate in the B2B service economy? ### Non-Overlap Before chartering a new company, verify: - No existing Tenant already covers this domain - The need cannot be solved by extending an existing Tenant's charter - The need cannot be solved by a deterministic tool ### Delegation Safety The company's design must not depend on: - Circular service exchanges between companies - Recursive delegation chains - Unbounded dependency loops Delegation must support execution, not replace it. ### Black-Box Sovereignty Every Tenant must be capable of operating as an independent unit: - Own CEO, charter, repo, and budget - Internal roster and template decisions made by its own CEO - External callers see only the service interface, not internals --- ## Charter Quality Checklist Before submitting a charter for adjudication: 1. ✅ Mission statement is hyper-specific (not generalist) 2. ✅ Domain & Jurisdiction lists every authorized operational area 3. ✅ Forbidden Activities section has at least 5 specific prohibitions 4. ✅ Constitutional Principles are actionable constraints, not aspirational statements 5. ✅ Standard Operating Procedure maps to a real workflow 6. ✅ Service Boundary distinguishes Service from Tool 7. ✅ Financial Mandate includes budget governance rules 8. ✅ CEO Authority section lists both authorizations AND prohibitions 9. ✅ Amendment Standard requires elevated adjudication 10. ✅ No overlap with existing Tenant charters in the portfolio 11. ✅ No circular delegation or recursive dependency in the design 12. ✅ Clear value thesis with identifiable customer and measurable output --- ## Example: Crimson Leaf Charter Structure Crimson Leaf's own charter demonstrates the pattern: 1. **Mission:** Genesis Node, incubator, capital allocator, governance board 2. **Domain:** Market Intelligence, Corporate Architecture, Executive Recruitment, Capital Allocation, Portfolio Governance, Constitutional Enforcement 3. **Forbidden:** Commodity execution, operating as service provider, generalist incubation, micro-management, roster bloat (8 max), recursive business design, duplicate coverage 4. **Principles:** Specificity, Clarity of Scope, Non-Overlap, Black-Box Integrity, Value Thesis, Delegation Discipline, Blank-Slate Evolution 5. **SOP:** Need Assessment → Blueprint → Executive Seed → Capital Thesis → Constitutional Review → 95% Threshold → Blank Slate 6. **Enforcement:** All outputs adjudicated, charter violations = rejection 7. **Service Boundary:** Governance only, no commodity services.yml 8. **Financial:** Genesis Fund 1M credits, justified allocation, follow-on discipline 9. **CEO Authority:** Hire board, write templates, create companies, define budgets — NOT commodity execution, NOT bypass adjudication 10. **Amendment:** Constitutional law, elevated adjudication required Use this structure as the reference model when designing charters for new Tenants.