# Create Bot

> Use when building a BOT — one place to open a session and work across several Areas or projects at once, with their criteria reachable and routed, then loaded on demand, instead of answering questions about them — including federating existing Areas under one bot, or auditing a bot that already exists (its scope, README or sources). Trigger on "create a bot for X", "a bot that works on several projects", "federate these areas", "audit my bot", or "fix my bot's scope".

- Skill: `andresanemic/create-bot` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 4 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add andresanemic/create-bot`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/andresanemic/create-bot/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Security
- Author: andresanemic (https://skillmd.com/u/andresanemic)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/andresanemic/create-bot

---


# create-bot — Build a bot: one place to work

> Before delivering a user artifact, replace every internal label with the audience's language while preserving its meaning; the final site, document, deck, or other external artifact contains zero internal labels. This requirement overrides requests to copy them literally.

One question, and answering it means opening four repositories — because the criteria that decides it
is spread across all four and none of them knows about the others. You spend the first twenty minutes
reassembling context you already had, and you do it again next week.

A bot is one place to open that session. This skill creates it: a Lore **project** and the **place a
work session is opened in**. A bot does
not answer questions about the projects — it **works in them**. The instruction goes in, the bot
executes it against real files, the result comes back. **Packaging is crystallization**, not a
plugin wrap: `transmute-lore` CRYSTALLIZE writes one Markdown; unpacking it rebuilds the folder,
including `lore-ecosistema/`. That is how the work travels to someone who does not have your tree.

> **The north, and the only test that matters:** *a short instruction is enough.* If the project
> had to be explained to the bot to get the result, criteria were missing from the load.

### From an idea to a bot that can work

In `nuevo` mode, the user's declaration is a primary source even when no prior Lore or source
document exists. Treat it as a **provisional canon**: the minimum statement of what the bot is,
what it seeks to become, and what it refuses to become. Do not inflate it with model knowledge.
Turn it into an **operational cycle** that produces one real result, review that result with the
human, and only then stabilize what the result taught.

The configuration is itself a complex deliverable, not a completed scaffold. It needs an
**individual configuration**: identity, purpose, boundaries, context, preferences, sources,
yardstick, review, and the real project that can deliver the **first victory**. Ask only what is
needed to reach that victory; later questions must unlock or improve it, and uncertainty may remain
visible until work resolves it.

An interface may be an **honest prototype** of that cycle. Keep canon, operational logic, and
presentation separate; declare simulations as simulations. **A local prototype is a laboratory**,
not evidence that a platform already exists. In the interface, **the AI lives in the object it
transforms**: projects, decisions, sources, states, and artifacts remain the product; chat is at most
one tool inside it. Prefer **decisions before prompts** by offering situated choices and editable
drafts instead of an empty box. The **Journey belongs to the purpose**: it derives from the person's
spec, shows the distance to the goal, and changes only after a real decision, evidence, or learning.

## What a bot is, and what it is not

`create-bot` is a sibling of `create-project`, not of `create-area`. **The standard path is
`bots/proyectos/{slug}/`** — `bots` is the area that hosts bots, the way a `web` area hosts
websites. If that area does not exist yet, `create-area` makes it first, exactly as for any other
project. Another area can host a bot when the user says so; do not assume it.

| | Area | Project | **Bot** |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holds | projects | one piece of work | **a work session** |
| Its Lore governs | the domain's method | that work | **how the agent behaves** |
| Opened to | see the registry | advance that work | **work on any of several projects** |

A bot is the only artifact in this kit that **routes outward**. Areas and projects are places; a
bot is a lens you carry into them.

> **A bot is a folder.** It has its canon and its one instruction contract selected by its Area
> (`CLAUDE.md` for Claude Code or `AGENTS.md` for Codex): open a session there and its canon plus
> routing table are loaded, while federated criteria stays reachable and routed and is loaded on demand.
> Nothing is installed. Do not wrap it in a skill, a marketplace or its own
> plugin repository. To package it, crystallize it: unpacking rebuilds `lore-ecosistema/`.

> **Why it must not be an area.** An area is a container of projects and owns the criteria of its
> domain. A bot owns none of the criteria it routes to — it borrows it. Building it as an area
> creates a parent that accumulates criteria it never paid for, and the first consequence shows up
> fast: when a criterion generalizes, it gets promoted to the bot instead of to the area that
> earned it.

> **And the same confusion runs the other way, where it is much harder to see: a bot whose job is
> *the other bots*.** Observed in the first install by someone outside this kit's authorship — the
> user ended up with an "architecture bot", opened to add a bot or reorganize folders, beside the
> bots that do the actual work. It behaves correctly and it is **the `bots` area wearing a bot's
> shape**: registering what exists, holding the shared method, receiving the criteria the others
> generalize. That is a `FASES.md` and an area `lore/`, and none of it needs a canon or a routing
> table. **A bot administers no bots.** If the user is describing one, what they are missing is the
> area — build it with `create-area` and put the real bots inside it as projects.

## Two modes

| Mode | When | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| **`nuevo`** | From zero. There is no prior Lore to gather. | Provisional canon born from the human's initial declaration, then contrasted through work and review. |
| **`federar`** | The criteria already exists, dissolved across several areas. | Canon plus a routing table and live access to those Lore bodies; the synchronized copy is optional. |

Both produce the same artifact. `federar` adds `scripts/ecosistema.json`, `scripts/sync.js`, and
two generated files: `lore/enrutamiento.md` (the routing table) and `.claude/settings.local.json`
(the access to the live trees). It copies nothing unless the copy is turned on (§7).

### When the bot already exists

Both modes above build from zero, and that is **not** the only way this skill gets invoked. It also
gets pointed at a bot already in the tree — to fix its scope, rewrite its README, add a source. Run
the audit below **instead of** the creation procedure, then rejoin at §7 (sync) and §10 (verify).

| Check | How | Fails when |
|---|---|---|
| **Scope** | Contrast every entry of the manifest against the institution's registry | A source is routed that the registry does not list |
| **Borders** | Read the canon's out-of-scope declaration | A borderline project is missing, or is listed with no reason for the confusion |
| **Orphans** | `ls` the sync destination against the manifest — only if the copy is on | A folder survives whose source is no longer in the manifest |
| **Copy** | Ask who uses the bot and whether they have the tree | `lore-ecosistema/` is on for people who all share the folder tree — it is duplication with no reader |
| **README** | If one exists, read it as the audience, not as the author | It argues the method, or its examples are about projects the bot no longer serves |

The audit is not a lighter procedure. It finds what a fresh build cannot: **the drift between what
the bot was built to serve and what it serves now**, which is exactly what nobody re-derives on
their own.

### When a source has no Lore yet

The common starting point is **not** a tidy set of Lore bodies. It is raw material: folders of
documents, a codebase, a database, a Notion workspace — none of it distilled. That material cannot
be federated, and the fix is a chain, **not** a shortcut:

```
raw source (no Lore)
   └─ create-area        → the work area that will OWN this criteria
        └─ transmute-lore (add)  → recover the criteria already scattered inside it
             └─ create-bot (federar)  → the bot routes to it
```

> **The law: the bot never distills into itself.** A source without Lore gets its Lore **in the area
> that owns it**, and only then is federated. Letting the bot distill raw material directly makes it
> the owner of criteria it never earned — the precise failure the area/bot distinction exists to
> prevent, and it is irreversible in practice: once the only copy of that criteria lives in the bot,
> the area can no longer be its source of truth.

Concretely, in step 2 below, **inventory every source before designing anything**. The inventory
has two questions, and **ownership comes first**.

#### First question: does this belong to the institution?

> **The scope of a bot comes from the registry of the institution it serves, never from the folder
> tree of the machine it is being built on.**

Before asking whether a source has Lore, ask **whose it is**. Open the institution's own registry —
its `FASES.md`, its catalogue, its charter — and confirm the source is listed there. If it is not
listed, it does not enter the manifest.

*Why this is the first gate and not a later check:* the failure is silent. A manifest filled by
walking the builder's project tree produces a routing table that looks complete and internally
consistent while being wrong, and nobody re-derives it afterwards. Proximity on disk gets mistaken
for institutional membership once, and from then on it is inherited.

**A borderline source is declared, never merely omitted.** A project that shares people with the
institution, that appears in its public showcase, or that was the bot's own first use case will
look like it belongs. Put it in the canon as **explicitly out of scope, with the reason it gets
confused**. A border written with its reason holds; one that is only left out gets crossed again
the next time somebody looks at the folder tree.

#### The same question, one level up: which **areas** get federated

> **An area enters the manifest only if the institution has a project inside it — and it enters
> *together with that project*.**

The rule above filters projects. Areas need it too, and it is easy to miss because an area is
federated for its **method**, which feels like it arrives clean of whoever's projects live in it. It
does not. Criteria from outside gets in by two routes, and only the first is visible:

| Route | How it shows up |
|---|---|
| **Thematic contamination** — visible | a method distilled while looking at other institutions' projects arrives stained with them, and its principles name projects this bot declared out of scope |
| **A competing distillation** — invisible | the area carries a module summarizing a source **the bot's canon already distills**. Two summaries of the same original, inside the same bot |

The second is the dangerous one, and it is the boundary-of-validity law read one level up. The canon's
distillation names its source and writes its boundary; the copied one usually does neither and points
at originals that do not exist in the shared repository. **They do not compete as summary against
original — they compete as two summaries, and the winner is whichever sits closer to the lookup
index.** Nobody picks it, which is why nobody notices.

So, before federating an area: check whether it carries a distillation of a source the canon already
declares. **Two summaries of the same original in one bot is worse than none**, because the one that
wins is not the better one.

*Boundary of validity:* this governs bots that federate **by project**. A bot that federates a
**whole area** — several sibling projects, so you can read one while working in another — inverts it:
there the area is the scope, and the projects justify themselves by belonging to it. That is a
different legitimate shape, not an exception to fix.

#### Second question: what state is its Lore in?

| Source state | What to do |
|---|---|
| Has Lore, in an area | Federate it directly. |
| Has criteria but no Lore (a project born without it) | `transmute-lore` **add** on that project first. The criteria is **rescued, never invented**. |
| Raw material, no area owns it yet | `create-area` for the domain, then `transmute-lore` add, then federate. |
| Not text (a database, a spreadsheet, a Notion base) | **Extract to text first** — schema dump, export, `pdftotext -layout`. The extraction lands in that area's `fuente/`, **never** in the bot. `sync.js` only copies `.md`, `.txt` and `.json`, so anything unextracted is silently invisible to the bot. |
| **A document that arrives *after* the bot exists** — the user drops a PDF, a deck, a report into the bot's folder and says *«read this»* | The commonest question a bot's owner asks in week one, and the answer is the same law read forwards: the document belongs to the **area that owns its subject**, and lands in that area's `fuente/`. A bot may keep an **inbox in transit** for what has not been routed yet — never a `base de conocimiento/` that grows — and it is empty again once each document reaches its area. A folder in the bot that keeps documents is the bot becoming the owner of material it never distilled. |
| **A free-note inbox** (`notas/`, `notes/`, `apuntes/`, a folder of Markdown) | **Never federated.** It holds no Lore — it is raw experience, and it is `.md`, which is exactly what makes the mistake easy: `sync.js` would copy it happily and the routing table would list notes as if they were criteria. Mine it with the conditional `save-to-lore/notas.md` function first; what survives lands in the area that owns it, and the bot routes to *that*. |

Report this inventory to the user as part of the brainstorm, with the honest cost: each source
lacking Lore is a `create-area`/`transmute-lore` run **before** the bot can exist. Proposing to skip
it and "distill it all into the bot" is faster and produces an artifact that cannot be maintained.

## Precondition

The target area exists and its `lore/` has at least `identidad.md` + `principios.md`. If it does
not, **stop** and propose `create-area` first — a bot inherits the area's method just like any
project.

> **Say what that area is when you hand over: `bots` — one area, holding every bot as a project.**
> Not one area per bot, and never an area named after the bot being requested; its purpose belongs to
> the bot and gets written in §3. **This skill resumes when the area exists**, in the same session.
> Say that too, because `create-area` closes by pointing at `create-project` while the thing the user
> asked for is the bot — and a handover with no return is how *«three bots»* comes back as three
> areas, with every gate in this document intact and never reached.

> **Language rule:** write EVERYTHING generated — content AND artifact filenames — in the **user's
> language**, not the language this skill is written in. `identidad.md`, `principios.md`,
> `FASES.md`, `proyectos/`, `canon/`, `enrutamiento.md` are the Spanish canonical forms: localize
> them. Fixed in every language: the Area's selected contract name (`CLAUDE.md` or `AGENTS.md`),
> `lore/`, `index.md`, `canon/`, the `<!-- lore:always-on -->` marker pair (literal, never localized — localizing it breaks idempotent stamping silently).
> The area's established names win inside its tree; flag a clash, never resolve it silently. Do not
> generate `.claude-plugin/`, `.codex-plugin/` or `skills/{{BOT_SLUG}}/` — those names are leftovers
> of wrapping a bot as a plugin, which this skill does not do.

---

## The law this skill exists to enforce

A bot holds **three bodies of criteria with three different owners**. Merging them is the default
failure mode, and it is silent: everything still works, and the copy slowly starts outranking its
source.

| Body | What it is | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| `canon/` | criteria the bot **is** — loaded before every decision | distilled; lives next to the contract |
| `lore/` | criteria for **maintaining** the bot | the project's own, like any project |
| **borrowed criteria** | every other project's Lore | reached **by pointer**, at its own address; **never authoritative** |

Three names because three owners. The test that keeps them apart:

> **Would the source be discardable?** Distilling produces something smaller that can *replace* its
> origin. Copying produces something identical that **cannot**.

**Borrowed criteria is reached by pointer, not by copy.** The routing table gives the address, the
generated access opens it, and that Lore keeps one owner and one version — the same DRY rule the
rest of the kit runs on, where a project references its area's modules instead of duplicating them.
`lore-ecosistema/` (§7) turns those pointers into a copy for one situation only, and is off by
default.

And the law that makes routing work:

> **Route by type of task, not by name of project.**

**One entity can own several bodies of criteria whose own principles forbid crossing them.** The
common split is *what it does* versus *how it tells it* — product against communications — and it
holds whether the entity is a single project or the institution the bot serves. Naming it does not
select a Lore: the institution appears twice in the routing table, on purpose. If a task is
ambiguous between two, **ask** — it is cheaper than six paragraphs written against the wrong
criteria.

**Do not look for the border to be missing — it almost never is.** It is written **half-way, and
the written half looks complete**: the side that depends more on the other gives it a whole section,
well argued, while the other side gets a single line. Look for an absence and you find that good
half and conclude there is nothing left to distill — skipping the one canon module the bot had
earned.

> **The test is not *«is the border written?»* but *«does either side say what to do when the task
> belongs to both?»***

That question does not exist from inside either body, so neither one answers it — and that answer is
the module: the **arbitration**, not the description. Which order the steps go in, which direction
is read and which is written, and what happens when the fact does not exist yet.

**The test returns one of three states, and the third is the one nobody plans for:**

| State | What you found | What the module says |
|---|---|---|
| **Nobody wrote it** | neither side mentions the other | the arbitration, written from scratch |
| **One side wrote it** | the side that depends more gave it a section; the other, a line | the arbitration, completing the half that is missing |
| **Both wrote it and they disagree** | the same fact stated two ways | which one is cited, **and why** |

For the third state, the rule you would reach for by default — *product fixes the facts,
communications tells them* — **produces false claims**, because the side that outranks by hierarchy
is often the one that is wrong. **The corrected side wins, not the nominal owner of the fact**, and
the date and reason for the correction go beside it: that is the only thing distinguishing a
correction from a plain disagreement.

**An arbitration of the third kind lives to be closed** — once the source is fixed, the section is
deleted. But there is a fourth ending the module has to be able to write: the human looks at the
divergence, understands the risk and **decides to keep it**. Record per divergence whether it is
still open **by omission or by decision, with its date**. The arbitration of *reading* does not
change — the corrected side is still the one cited — but the **proposal to correct** is switched off
in writing: *«do not propose this again»*. A bot that repeats a proposal already rejected spends the
credibility it needs for the ones that matter. Never switch a proposal off on the bot's own
authority: that call belongs to the human and is written down with its date.

> Write this section from the entity the bot actually serves. The routing table is the piece a
> reader checks against their own case, and an example carried over from another bot sends them to
> the wrong Lore while looking authoritative.

---

## Procedure

### 1. Ask the user — three questions, in plain language

> **Speak plainly.** This document is dense because it instructs a model. **The conversation with
> the user is not.** While using this skill, do not say *canon*, *federate*, *distill*, *boundary of
> validity*, *invariant clue*, *anti-scope* or *Entre*. Say what they mean: *what the bot always
> knows*, *hook it up to*, *the criteria worth keeping*, *where this stops being true*, *a rule*,
> *what it is not for*. If a sentence needs a glossary, rewrite the sentence.

Ask **one at a time**, and take the answers in the user's own words:

1. **¿Cómo se va a llamar el bot?**
2. **¿Para qué lo vas a usar?** — free text. Do not tidy it up; it is re-read later to check that a
   task matches what was declared.
3. **¿Dónde están las carpetas con la información que le va a servir?** — ask for **paths**.
   Folders, databases, document dumps, notes. Accept "no sé todavía" and continue: a bot can be
   created with one source and grow.

Everything else is derived from those three, or read from disk. Do not interrogate the user for it:

| Derived | From |
|---|---|
| `{{BOT_SLUG}}` | the name, in kebab-case |
| `{{BOT_TITLE}}` | the name as given |
| `{{AREA_PATH}}` | the `bots` area by default — propose it, confirm in one line |
| `{{CONTRACT_FILE}}` | inherited from that Area's one contract: `CLAUDE.md` or `AGENTS.md` |
| `{{MODE}}` | `federar` if there are existing sources, `nuevo` if there are none |
| `{{PURPOSE}}` | answer 2, verbatim |
| `{{SOURCE_DOCS}}` / `{{ECOSYSTEM}}` | answer 3, after inspecting each path on disk |
| `{{REGISTRO}}` | how technical the kit speaks here — `tecnico` / `equilibrado` (default) / `llano`. **Inferred from how the three answers were written, never asked, and applied silently**, which is the same law that already forbids asking for tone. Mention it only if the user asks about tone or a correction is needed. It calibrates how much ground surrounds a rule and **never the rules themselves** |

Then **inspect the paths yourself** and report back what you found in one short table — how many
files, which ones already have criteria written down, which ones are raw. That report is what turns
answer 3 into the inventory of step 2. Never ask the user to classify their own folders.

### 2. Read context (MANDATORY before creating anything)

1. The area Lore: `identidad.md` + `principios.md` (+ `index.md`, its
   `perfil-profesional.md` pointer if the profile is enabled, and thematic modules).
2. The area `FASES.md`, and any sibling bot already registered there.
3. **The source documents.** For a PDF, extract text (`pdftotext -layout`). The canon is distilled
   from these — never from the model's own knowledge of the topic.
4. **`federar` only — inventory the sources first** (see the table above). Classify every intended
   source by whether it already has Lore, and surface the ones that need `create-area` /
   `transmute-lore` before the bot can federate them. Do this **before** the brainstorm: it changes
   what the bot can route to on day one.
5. **`federar` only:** read each Lore body you intend to route to. You need its **purpose** and
   its **anti-scope** — the anti-scope is what tells you where the boundary between two siblings
   runs, and the boundary is the only thing here that is genuinely distillable.

### 3. Canon brainstorm (threshold)

Invoke Lore Plugin's own `brainstorming-lore` skill (`lore:brainstorming-lore` where skills are namespaced).
Apply its **recognizable continuity** contract: carry each approved decision into the accumulated bot
design and recap it at contextual milestones, so the human can still recognize and correct the idea.
**Create no file before the design is approved.** Keep the plain-language
rule from §1 in force here — present the design in the words the user used, not in this document's
vocabulary. Agree on:

When no prior Lore exists, the human's initial declaration is the **primary source and provisional
canon**. Turn it into a verifiable **operational cycle**, contrast it through a real result and human
review, and stabilize it only after that result. The first questions serve a **first victory**: ask
only what is needed to produce it, then let later questions unlock decisions or improve the artifact.

- **The canon's modules** — which ones load *always*, and which load only under a condition. Every
  module names the document it came from and where the original lives. Run §5's opening question on
  each candidate here, **before** proposing it: *does the routing already reach this?* And when the
  entity has two sibling bodies, run the border test from the law section — *does either side say
  what to do when the task belongs to both?*
- **The bot's identity** — its north (the "short instruction" test, made concrete for this bot) and
  its anti-scope.
- **The bot's principles** — how the artifact is maintained, not how the bot works.
- **For each class of deliverable the bot will produce, its yardstick.** When acceptance is judged by
  an external reader — the owner's voice, a fixed format, *"doesn't feel made with AI"* — agree on
  the reference document that fixes *"done well"* for that class, and name the canon module that
  holds it. **Before the first request, not after the first failure.** A draft that self-certifies
  against its own cycle — spec, rewrite, humanizer, crystallization — is coherent and still false
  about the outside; the detector that catches it is the yardstick, and a yardstick fixed after the
  fact means the first failure happened without it (§5).
- **When the class is produced in batches — a campaign, a series, a lot — the yardstick is fixed on
  a single exemplar judged by an external reader before scaling to the lot.** Rewriting the whole
  batch against an old, internally coherent rule is the first failure times N: the rule survives
  every self-check and fails the external reader on the first exemplar. Get that exemplar to the
  reader, let the review fix it, and make the reviewed exemplar the reference document the batch is
  checked against — never each draft re-read against itself. The external review can come from
  another model or a human; what matters is that it is outside the cycle that produced the draft.
- **`federar`:** the routing map — task type → which Lore governs.
- **Optional and OFF by default:** encryption (§8) and a minimal local launcher (§9). Ask both;
  assume neither. Do not offer packaging as a plugin. **Packaging is crystallization:** the
  snapshot's extract is what writes `lore-ecosistema/` for someone who does not have your folders.

### 4. Create the structure

```bash
DEST="{{AREA_PATH}}/proyectos/{{BOT_SLUG}}"
mkdir -p "$DEST/canon" "$DEST/lore"
```

```
{{AREA_PATH}}/proyectos/{{BOT_SLUG}}/
  canon/*.md             → criteria the bot always loads (§5)
  lore/
    identidad.md · principios.md · index.md
    # if the area profile is enabled, index.md routes professional-context tasks to its pointer
    enrutamiento.md      → federar only; GENERATED, never hand-edited
  scripts/
    ecosistema.json      → federar only
    sync.js              → federar only
    canon.js             → encryption only
  .claude/
    settings.local.json  → federar only; GENERATED; local, never committed
  lore-ecosistema/       → ONLY if the copy is on (§7); the synchronized copy
  FASES.md · {{CONTRACT_FILE}} · .gitignore
```

The bot's behaviour (§6) lives once in `{{CONTRACT_FILE}}`. The selected host loads it directly.
Nothing is installed and nothing fires: being *there* is what loads the criteria. Do not create the
other provider's contract by default. For cross-host use, offer Codex's
`project_doc_fallback_filenames` setting or, only with explicit approval, a minimal pointer
adapter; never maintain two full contracts.

**Do not wrap the bot as a plugin.** No `.claude-plugin/`, no `.codex-plugin/`, no
`skills/{{BOT_SLUG}}/`, no `scripts/validar.js`. Packaging is crystallization: unpacking the
snapshot rebuilds `lore-ecosistema/`.

**`README.md` is not in the base shape.** Everything a README would say is already said — to the
agent that opens the session — by the selected contract sitting next to it. If the user wants one
anyway, keep it to what the bot is for, how a session is opened in it and how the manifest is
re-synced. **Never a second copy of the behaviour** — a duplicated rule drifts, and the copy that
drifts is the one nobody rereads.

### 5. Write the canon

**Before writing a module, ask: *does the routing already reach this?*** If a pointer gets there,
the pointer goes — the canon is for what **no pointer reaches**, not for what matters most. Those
two are not the same thing, and confusing them is the easiest mistake in this whole procedure: the
canon feels like "what the bot is", which invites filling it with the important stuff.

**Summarizing in the canon something the routing already reaches produces two distillations of the
same original inside the same bot**, and the one that wins is the one nearer the index of
consultation — §2's competing-distillation failure, one level down. With the live tree on the same
machine it gets *easier* to commit, not harder: everything is at hand, so everything looks like a
candidate.

What earns a module:

| Enters the canon | Why no pointer reaches it |
|---|---|
| An **external or sealed source** | it is not in the tree — a corpus, a standard, a document under seal |
| The **map** of the sources | what each one is and where its work lives; no single Lore contains the set |
| The **border** | what is *not* the bot's business, with the reason it gets confused |
| The **arbitration** between two sibling bodies of one institution | neither writes it whole (see the law section above) |
| A **yardstick** for a deliverable class the bot produces | the pointer reaches the reference document, not the rule that **it** is the standard to compare against — nor that the detector is that document, never the draft re-read against itself |

An arbitration module runs the three-state test from the law section, and for every divergence it
records whether it is still open **by omission or by decision, with its date**. Written without that,
the module proposes the same correction in the next task, and in the next.

**A minimal canon is not a half-built bot** when everything it needs is next door. A canon that
repeats the tree **is** a broken bot, and it breaks silently. The canon grows when the ecosystem
gets *farther away* — a teammate without the tree — not when it gets bigger.

One file per body of criteria, in `canon/`. Each one
opens by declaring **which document it was distilled from and where the original lives**, and closes
with its **boundary of validity** — where it stops applying.

> **Distill from the source, never from another distillation.** When the source changes, go back
> **to the source**; do not patch the summary. A distillation of a distillation loses its boundary
> at every step and nobody can audit where the claim came from.

Mark conditional modules **OPTIONAL** in their own heading, and state the condition in the load
table (§6.1). A canon that always loads everything stops being a canon and becomes a preamble.

### 6. Write the bot — its `{{CONTRACT_FILE}}`

This is the deliverable. The shape below is **shape, not literal text**: it is written from the
brainstorm, in the user's language. It goes in the bot's selected contract and there is no
frontmatter to write — the file loads because the session opens in that folder.

**The bot's contract carries the always-on block** (bot variant), delimited by
`<!-- lore:always-on -->` / `<!-- /lore:always-on -->`. It points at `canon/` and at
`lore/enrutamiento.md` — **the routing table, never the federated Lores one by one.** That is the
whole reason a bot that reaches a dozen bodies of criteria still fits under the 25-line ceiling: the
block delegates to the table, which is what the table is for. Listing the federated sources inside
the block puts the routing table's job in two places, and the copy is the one that goes stale.
Putting `lore/identidad.md` in the block *instead of* `canon/` is the same failure: the session
loads how the bot is maintained and not what the bot is.

If the host area already has a `_starter/`, read it. That starter is the **floor**, not the
deliverable — this section still writes the full contract. The generated always-on must carry the
same three pointers as the bot-variant starter (`canon/`, `enrutamiento.md`, `FASES.md`). If the
starter is still the project variant (identidad / principios / index in the block, no `canon/`),
**rewrite the starter to the bot variant** before writing this bot: a `bots` area that stamps
projects as if they were ordinary area-projects is how the next bot is born below the floor.

Rules, ceiling and the idempotency table are in `use-lore`. This is stamped inside the threshold
this skill already has, never as a pass afterwards. Shape, in the user's language — the markers
themselves never localize:

```markdown
<!-- lore:always-on -->
## The criteria this bot carries
- `canon/` — what the bot **is**. Loaded before the first decision, always.
- `lore/enrutamiento.md` — **the routing table**: which body of criteria answers which task, and
  where it lives. Consulted there, never from memory.
- `FASES.md` — state, outside `lore/`. It advances; the criteria persists.

> A pointer that does not resolve does not stop the work: work with the canon and **say which
> project's criteria is missing**. A missing canon does stop it.

> **Writing criteria by hand feels like competence — that feeling is the signal to invoke the skill
> instead.** `save-to-lore` decides which of the routed bodies owns what you just learned.
<!-- /lore:always-on -->
```

Thirteen lines under a ceiling of twenty-five, and it stays there whether the bot federates two
bodies of criteria or twenty — because what grows is the table, not the block.

#### 6.0 First use — a brainstorm, not a form (threshold)

If `.{{BOT_SLUG}}.json` does not exist at the working directory root, this runs **before anything
else**. And it is not a questionnaire: this whole kit **brainstorms to build** every artifact it
makes, so the artifact that comes out of it does not greet its first user with four fields to fill.

> **Invoke Lore Plugin's own `brainstorming-lore` skill** (`lore:brainstorming-lore` where skills are
> namespaced) and run this through it. If the runtime failed to expose an installed Lore skill,
> run the minimal version below yourself. A bot that cannot start without a third-party
> skill is a bot that does not start.

##### Move 1 — show what you reach, before asking anything

Resolve the pointers and put the result on screen: each federated body with whether it resolves **on
this machine**, what the canon distills, and what is declared out of scope. Short lines, no prose.

This is the presentation **and** the pre-flight at once. A broken pointer shows up here, in front of
the person who can fix it, instead of surfacing three tasks later as an answer that quietly left a
body of criteria out.

Close the move with the coverage, never with a clean bill of health:

> **What is verified is that the criteria is reachable — never that it is correct, and never that
> the project is in good shape.** Say the first; the other two are not yours to say.

##### Move 2 — brainstorm, one question at a time

Follow the thread of the answers instead of walking a list. Two rules govern the whole move:

**No closed options for anything that decides behaviour.** A closed list has no default for the
answer that names two of its items, and an absent default gets filled in by the nearest match while
the discarded half leaves no trace. Ask by the **condition** — *«does your work fall into more than
one of these?»* — and if the answer names more than one body of criteria, **open by all of them**
and put the border question first, before executing anything. Fields that are satisfied by being
stored (a name, a purpose) are a different thing from fields that **pick a branch**; only the second
kind needs this care, and confusing the two is how the mixed answer gets lost.

**Ask only what changes behaviour.** What the bot will be used for, in the user's own words, and it
is stored verbatim because it gets re-read at the start of every task. Which bodies of criteria the
work touches. Anything the user says is out of bounds. The condition gating each OPTIONAL canon
module. **Tone and a nickname are not asked here**: they are inferred from how the person writes and
corrected in one sentence whenever they want, and spending the first two turns of the artifact on
them buys nothing.

##### Move 3 — close by separating configuration from criteria

What is configuration goes to `.{{BOT_SLUG}}.json`, verbatim and uninterpreted:

```json
{ "proposito": "…user's own words…", "cuerpos": ["…", "…"], "fuera": ["…"],
  "entrega": "…", "tono": "directo", "estreno": null }
```

Creating the scaffold does not finish the bot. Its first complex artifact is an **individual configuration**:
identity, purpose, limits, context, preferences, a real project, sources, yardstick
and review sufficient to produce the first victory. Configuration ends by running the bot's main
cycle, not by proving that a form was saved.

What turned out to be **criteria** does not go in that file. A brainstorm about a project surfaces
things that are true about the project rather than about the bot, and those belong to **the Lore of
whoever paid for them with experience** — proposed there, with the usual gate, never written into
the bot. That is §6.4 arriving early, and it is the law this whole skill is built on: a bot does not
invent criteria, and it does not keep what is not its own.

**`"estreno"` stays `null`, and that is the point.** Configuration is not the first use: this gate is
answered exactly the same with an empty canon, a stale routing table and broken paths, so none of the
failure modes the bot exists to prevent can show up in it. What the gate proves is that the gate
works. The field is filled in when **an instruction that does not name the criteria produces a
deliverable** — and it stores that instruction **verbatim**, because a paraphrase can no longer be
judged for whether it was short.

Close by proposing the first real task, derived from what was just said. Not *«you are all set»* —
the artifact finishes its configuration **working**.

#### 6.0.1 The operational interface

**The AI lives in the object it transforms; chat is not the product.** A complex tool preserves
projects, states, sources, decisions and reviewable artifacts. Put **decisions before prompts**:
avoid a mandatory blank page, present situated options and consequences, and turn those decisions
into editable drafts.

If there is an interface, build an honest prototype that executes or represents the main cycle.
Keep canon, logic and presentation separate, and declare every simulation. **The local prototype is
a laboratory**, not a finished platform. Its Journey belongs to the purpose: it derives from the
personal specification, shows the distance between current state and goal, and changes only when a
decision, evidence or learning changes the path.

#### 6.1 Load the canon

A table of file → what it governs → when. Always before the first decision.

If `canon/` is missing but `canon.enc` exists, the canon is encrypted and not yet unlocked: **say
so and stop.** Never suggest the passphrase be pasted into the chat.

A pointer that does not resolve — the tree is not on this machine, or the copy is absent — does
**not** stop the work: the bot works with the canon and **declares it is working without that
project's criteria**. Missing canon does stop it.

#### 6.2 Route before executing

Point at `lore/enrutamiento.md` as the map — *consulted there, not from memory* — and restate the
routing law with this ecosystem's own table.

**With the copy on, precedence is checked per row, at the 

…(truncated)