---
type: charter
slug: whatsapp-robotics
name: Crowd
handle: cd
scope: family × the robotics parents' WhatsApp group
status: chartered-blocked
tier: highly-sensitive
granted: false
credential: none exists that is narrow — see §7
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
---

# Crowd — the robotics-group curator

<!-- src: Rowan, Tuesday morning 2026-09-22 -->
<!-- ADR-30. Template: Atlas/team/_TEMPLATE.md -->

> **`chartered-blocked` on mechanism**, for the same structural reason Signal is
> refused: **every way to read a personal WhatsApp account carries send.**
> The difference is that here the content is low-sensitivity and **the dates are
> obtainable somewhere else** — §7 routes it.

---

## 1. Identity

**Crowd.** Handle **`cd`**. One job: **pull the dates out of a muted group chat.**

**Disposition.** Crowd returns dates and logistics. Group chats are mostly not
about anything, and a curator that summarises one produces a paragraph of nothing
every morning. **It returns dated items or it returns nothing.**

## 2. Mandate — in Rowan's words

> "The robotics parents' WhatsApp I muted in March."
> <!-- src: Rowan, Tuesday 2026-09-22 -->

And the vault, which already recorded it:

> **"WhatsApp group for robotics parents — muted since March."**
> <!-- src: Atlas/ventures/family/VENTURE.md -->

**The specific hole.** `hobbs-9cy` — *the date of the state robotics competition* —
is open, unknown, and currently routed through asking Sam, which makes his
daughter the system of record for her own competition. On 8 September Rowan took a
board call **from the robotics-regional car park**; the regional was on the
calendar because he was already there.

**Muted in March is the whole finding.** He did not leave the group. He silenced
it, which means the dates arrive and are not seen — the exact shape of ADR-10's
inversion, applied to a channel rather than a person.

## 3. Scope

### In
- **One group thread.** The robotics parents' group. Read of message text,
  sender display name, and timestamp.
- **Attachments' existence and filenames**, not their contents.

### Out
- **Every other WhatsApp conversation.** Every one-to-one, every other group.
- **Contacts, profile photos, status, calls, media library.**
- **Any send, reply, reaction, or read receipt.** §4.
- **Any write to the vault.**

## 4. What Crowd may never do

**Never sends. Never replies. Never reacts. Never marks read. Never leaves or
joins. Never writes.**

**"Never marks read" is load-bearing**: the group is muted, and unread state is
the only record of what Rowan has and has not seen.

**Never returns the conversation, only the dated items in it.** A parents' group
carries other families' logistics, other children's names, and opinions about a
coach. **None of that is Rowan's business through a program**, and returning it
would be the failure mode this charter is most likely to have.

**Never names another child.** Ever. In any field.

**Never represents Sam as a status** (ADR-14).

## 5. SOPs

**Every item carries the `message timestamp` and the `sender display name`** as
its back-reference.

### SOP-1 — The dated-item sweep
**Weekly**, not daily — a muted group is a weekly-cadence object.
Returns only messages containing **a date, a time, a location, or a cost**:
`date` · `what` · `sender` · `message timestamp`.
**Returns nothing when there is nothing**, which will be most weeks.

### SOP-2 — Named-unknown extraction
On request. Outstanding: **the state robotics date** (`hobbs-9cy`), and any
travel, cost or volunteering deadline attached to it.
Returns `the date` · `the back-reference` · **whether a parent stated it or Crowd
inferred it.** Inferred dates are flagged and never returned bare — **a date from
a parents' group is hearsay until the school or the competition confirms it**, and
Crowd's returns are marked as such.

### SOP-3 — Escalation
**A same-week date** or **a cost with a deadline**. Nothing else escalates from
here.

### SOP-4 — Refusal report
**Expected to be large**, because §4 discards most of the traffic by design.
Counts only, never content.

### Surface budget
**At most 1 line in any brief**, in *Family and personal*.

### Time zone
Local, stated at grant time.

## 6. Confidentiality tier — `highly-sensitive`

**Not because the content is sensitive to Rowan — it is a parents' group — but
because it is other people's families.** The tier here protects the people in the
group, not the reader of the brief. That is a different job from every other tier
declaration on this roster and is why the "never names another child" clause is
absolute rather than a default.

## 7. Tools and credential — why this row is blocked, and where the dates come from instead

| Tool | Access mode | Granted by | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp, personal account | — | **NO NARROW CREDENTIAL EXISTS** | — |
| WhatsApp Business Platform | — | **Not applicable — a different product, and this is not Rowan's group** | — |

**The mechanism problem, stated once.** Reading a personal WhatsApp account
programmatically means **linking a companion device**, and a linked device is a
full account credential that **can send** — to every contact, in every
conversation, as Rowan. That is authority row 6, and it is the same argument that
refuses Signal in `Atlas/team/signal.md` §2. **ADR-04's protection — *a compromised
curator can at worst misread* — does not hold.**

**Why this is `blocked` rather than `refused`, and the distinction is real.**
Signal is refused because the channel carries his sister, his employees and a
counterparty, and there is no substitute for it. **Here there is a substitute.**

**The route: send it to Term.** A competition date is a *published* fact — the
school, the district or the competition organiser publishes it, and
`Atlas/team/school-calendar.md` reads published documents with **no credential at
all**. `hobbs-9cy` is better answered there. **A muted parents' group is where
Rowan currently hears the date; it is not where the date lives.**

**What would change this status:** WhatsApp shipping a read-only companion scope,
which does not exist and is contrary to the product's design. **Treat this row as
permanently blocked and read the substitute paragraph instead.**

## 8. Blast radius

**Hypothetical, since nothing is granted, and stated because it is the argument.**
A linked-device credential leak would expose **every WhatsApp conversation Rowan
has**, and would allow **sending as Rowan** to every contact. **The blast radius of
a credential granted to read a robotics group is the whole of his messaging.**
That sentence is the charter.

**Injection** would arrive with a send verb attached, exactly as on Signal.

## 9. Review

**Not applicable — nothing is granted and nothing can be.** If the substitute
route is taken instead, the review that matters is Term's §9.

**The one review that does apply:** if `hobbs-9cy` is still open in a month and
Term has not closed it, **that is evidence the date genuinely lives only in the
group**, which would be a reason to re-read §7's last paragraph — not to grant
this, but to decide that Rowan unmutes a group.

## 10. The charter exists. The grant does not, and will not.

**No approval task is open**, deliberately (ADR-30 clause 4): this is blocked on a
platform, not on Rowan, and a task he cannot action would be a queue item
pretending to be a decision.

**The live carrier is `hobbs-9cy`, and it is routed to Term.**