--- title: The Constitution description: The one file the assistant reads before anything else, every session — what belongs in it, what must be kept out of it, and why it should be short enough to obey. track: core url: https://www.chiefofstaff.io/guides/the-constitution published: 2026-09-01 author: chiefofstaff.io editorial system outcome: draft a two-page constitution for your system, with an identity paragraph, a read-every-session list, a vault map, core operating rules, audit rails, and a decision-authority table you approve line by line. prerequisites: what-a-chief-of-staff-system-is source: chiefofstaff.io --- # The Constitution The one file the assistant reads before anything else, every session — what belongs in it, what must be kept out of it, and why it should be short enough to obey. ## The Drift Problem A capable assistant with no standing rules re-decides its own role every session. This is not a capability failure — it shows up most clearly in the strongest models, because they are the most willing to be helpful in whichever direction the conversation leans. Monday it files everything meticulously; Tuesday it over-explains and under-files; Wednesday it sends something it should have drafted. What drift costs is not any single mistake. It is trust, which erodes faster than it rebuilds. The fix is a document the system reads before it acts, every time. Claude Code injects a file called `CLAUDE.md` from the working folder into every session automatically. Most people use it for build commands. For a chief of staff, it is something much bigger: **the employment contract.** ## What the Constitution Is — and What It Is Not Mechanically, it is a Markdown file at the root of the vault. Because it is the one file with a guaranteed read, the biggest design decision is what **not** to put in it: - **State does not belong there.** Facts about your ventures, people, and projects live in the vault. If the constitution changes weekly, state is leaking into it. - **Prompts about tone do not belong there.** Rules about role and authority do. - **Detail does not belong there.** Push it down into the files the constitution points at. A model follows a two-page constitution far more reliably than a twenty-page one. ## What It Should Contain ### 1. Identity and Mission, in One Paragraph Open with who the assistant is and what it is not: > "You are my chief of staff. Your job is to ingest my data inputs, maintain state across my ventures, and brief me on what matters. You are not a generic assistant — you operate by the rules in this document." The "not a generic assistant" line matters. Without it, helpful-assistant defaults leak into everything: it over-explains, over-asks, and under-files. ### 2. A Read-These-Every-Session List A short list of files the assistant must load before acting: who you are and your escalation triggers; the decision log; the operating cadence; the anti-patterns list; and — above all — the feedback log of past corrections. This is the mechanism by which last month's lessons shape today's judgment. See [The feedback log](/guides/the-feedback-log). ### 3. The Vault Map A directory tree of the whole system with one-line annotations, so the assistant always knows where a fact belongs. See [The vault](/guides/the-vault). ### 4. Core Operating Rules Ten or so numbered rules. The load-bearing ones: - **Truth lives in files.** When you state a new fact, it is written to the right file *before* the reply. - **Manager, not operator.** The chief of staff holds no external credentials; named team members do. - **Sub-agents read; the parent acts.** Curators research and summarise. Only the chief of staff edits files, creates tasks, or sends anything. - **Never collapse the review layers.** Triage, briefing, and acting are separate operations. - **Every brief item must demand a response.** No FYI fluff in the daily brief. - **Family time is a venture.** Same calendar, same brief, same priority weight. - **No fabrication.** Not in the files, not from a curator: "I don't know." ### 5. Edit Authority with Audit Rails The assistant may edit any knowledge file autonomously. Safety comes from rails, not gates: one git commit per edit with a structured message; a provenance comment in the file itself; a line in the day's curation log; a brief that surfaces the diff; and a correction loop that turns "you got X wrong" into a feedback-log entry. See [Files are memory](/guides/files-are-memory). ### 6. A Decision-Authority Table The single most trust-building section. Spell out exactly what the assistant may do alone and what it may never do. This gets its own guide: [The decision-authority table](/guides/the-decision-authority-table). ### 7. Conventions Task-labelling rules, the concrete-action title rule, naming patterns, and the rule that structural decisions get a decision record written *before* the assistant acts on them. ### 8. A "When in Doubt" Clause Ours ends: re-read the identity file, the decision log, and the feedback log; check the relevant venture folder; then ask rather than guess. *A clarifying question costs thirty seconds; a wrong action costs trust.* ## What Keeps It Healthy - **Keep it stable.** It should change rarely, and every change should be a decision record. - **Keep it short enough to be obeyed.** If a rule needs three paragraphs of nuance, the nuance goes in a linked file and the rule stays one line. - **Let the feedback log amend it.** When the same lesson appears three times in the feedback log, it gets promoted to a standing lesson — effectively a constitutional amendment without touching the constitution. - **Re-read it quarterly, with your own eyes.** Is the chief of staff working on the right things? Edit the identity paragraph to match what you now need. ## A Minimal First Version You do not need all eight sections on day one. Identity, the read-every-session list, three or four operating rules, the decision-authority table, and the when-in-doubt clause is a complete constitution for a system with no curators and no channel yet. Add sections when the first felt limitation arrives. ## See it The [demo vault](/demo/vault/claude) has a real constitution, with its seventeen authority rows approved line by line. It is fictional, and it was built by Claude Code sessions running [the bootstrap prompt](/start#prompt) — not written by hand.