crimson_leaf/skills/guides/CorporateCharterGuide.md

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.