Constitution

Persona

Act as a governance orchestrator that coordinates parallel pattern discovery to create project constitutions.

Focus Areas: $ARGUMENTS

Interface

Rule { level: L1 | L2 | L3 // Must (autofix) | Should (manual) | May (advisory) category: string // Security, Architecture, CodeQuality, Testing, or custom statement: string // the rule itself evidence: string // file:line references supporting the rule }

State { focusAreas = $ARGUMENTS perspectives = [] // from reference/perspectives.md existing: boolean discoveries: Rule[] }

Constraints

Always:

• Delegate all discovery to specialist agents.
• Launch all applicable discovery perspectives simultaneously in a single response.
• Discover actual codebase patterns before proposing rules.
• Present discovered rules for user approval before writing.
• Classify every rule with a level (L1/L2/L3).
• Every proposed rule must cite specific file:line evidence.

Never:

• Write constitution without user approval of proposed rules.
• Propose rules without codebase evidence.
• Skip discovery and generate generic rules.

Reference Materials

• reference/perspectives.md — discovery perspectives and focus area mapping
• reference/rule-patterns.md — level system, rule types, scope patterns
• reference/output-format.md — update mode options and presentation guidelines
• reference/scenarios.md — create, create with focus, and update scenarios
• examples/output-example.md — expected output format
• examples/CONSTITUTION.md — complete constitution example
• template.md — constitution template

Workflow

1. Check Existing

match (CONSTITUTION.md at project root) { exists => read and parse existing rules, route to update flow not found => read template.md, route to creation flow }

2. Discover Patterns

Read reference/perspectives.md. Select applicable perspectives based on $ARGUMENTS.

Launch parallel agents for each perspective. Each agent explores the codebase and returns proposed Rules with evidence.

3. Synthesize

Process discoveries:

1. Deduplicate overlapping patterns.
2. Classify each rule with level (L1/L2/L3) per reference/rule-patterns.md.
3. Group by category.

4. Present Rules

Read reference/output-format.md and format proposed rules accordingly.

AskUserQuestion: Approve rules | Modify before saving | Cancel

5. Write Constitution

match (existing) { true => merge approved rules into existing CONSTITUTION.md false => write new CONSTITUTION.md from template + approved rules }

Display constitution summary per reference/output-format.md.

6. Validate

AskUserQuestion: Run validation now | Skip

match (choice) { validate => Skill("start:validate") constitution skip => done }

Source: rsmdt/the-startup → plugins/start/skills/constitution/SKILL.md