stack/docs/design/framework-constitution/debate/position-architect.md

Position Paper — The Framework Architect

Lens: Clean layering, single-source-of-truth, separation of concerns, long-term maintainability.

Author role: Framework Architect Scope: DQ1–DQ5 of docs/design/framework-constitution/BRIEF.md Verdict in one line: The framework is sound in spirit but has no enforced seam between framework-owned law and user-owned identity. Today the seam is a naming convention and an rsync --exclude list — not an architecture. Make the seam physical (separate directories, separate ownership, separate version stamps) and most of DQ1–DQ5 collapse into mechanical consequences.

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0. Ground truth — what is actually there

I read the real files. The current model is a flat overlay:

• packages/mosaic/framework/defaults/AGENTS.md is an explicit "THIN CORE" contract (its own line 5–8) that mixes universal law (hard gates, lines 23–55) with operating-policy decisions attributed to a named human — e.g. line 37: "(Policy: Jason, 2026-06-11.)" baked into a hard gate.
• defaults/SOUL.md conflates three layers in one file: persona (line 8 You are **Jarvis**), framework behavioral law (lines 42–48 guardrails: "Do not hardcode secrets", injected-reminder defense), and operator accommodation (line 23 PDA-friendly language).
• defaults/USER.md is a half-sanitized stub ((not configured)) but still ships opinionated defaults (lines 26–28).
• The templates/ layer already exists and is correct in shape (templates/SOUL.md.template, templates/USER.md.template use {{AGENT_NAME}}, {{USER_NAME}}) — but defaults/SOUL.md is a filled-in copy of that template with one operator's values, not a generic default. The template layer is, as the brief says, under-used.
• Upgrade safety is one array: install.sh line 24, PRESERVE_PATHS=("AGENTS.md" "SOUL.md" "USER.md" "TOOLS.md" "STANDARDS.md" "memory" "sources" "credentials"), applied via rsync --exclude (lines 116–124). This is the entire deployed-vs-source reconciliation mechanism.
• Contamination is not isolated to persona files. grep -ilE 'jarvis|jason|woltje|PDA' over the framework returns 29 files, including operational tooling: tools/git/detect-platform.sh:89 hardcodes $HOME/src/jarvis-brain/credentials.json as the default credential path; guides/ORCHESTRATOR.md:99,111,152 instruct agents to copy templates from jarvis-brain/docs/templates/; defaults/TOOLS.md:40 contains a "MANDATORY jarvis-brain rule". This is leakage into the law and tooling layers, not just identity.

The conflation the brief describes is real and worse than "persona file has a name in it" — operator-specific policy and paths are embedded inside the universal contract and the shared tools.

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DQ1 — Layering: yes, introduce an explicit Constitution layer. Define five layers, not three.

The brief proposes three layers (law / persona / operator). Three is one too few and one too coarse. From a separation-of-concerns standpoint there are five distinct concerns with different owners, different change cadences, and different upgrade semantics — and owner × cadence is the only honest basis for drawing layer boundaries:

#	Layer	Owns	Changed by	Upgrade semantics	Canonical file
1	CONSTITUTION	Universal, non-negotiable law: hard gates, delivery contract, escalation triggers, block-vs-done, integrity guardrails	Framework maintainers only	Overwritten every upgrade; user MUST NOT edit	~/.config/mosaic/constitution/CONSTITUTION.md (+ guides/)
2	STANDARDS	Universal defaults that a deployment may tighten but not loosen (secrets handling, merge strategy, test policy)	Framework ships; deployment may extend	Overwritten; deployment deltas live in layer 4	~/.config/mosaic/constitution/STANDARDS.md
3	PERSONA (SOUL)	Agent identity: name, tone, role, communication style	User	Preserved	~/.config/mosaic/SOUL.md
4	OPERATOR (USER + POLICY)	Human profile, accommodations, and operator policy decisions (the "Jason 2026-06-11" merge-authority call)	User	Preserved	~/.config/mosaic/USER.md, ~/.config/mosaic/policy/*.md
5	DEPLOYMENT/RUNTIME	Machine-specific: tool paths, credentials locations, runtime adapters, MCP wiring	Install/machine	Regenerated from environment, never hand-pinned	~/.config/mosaic/TOOLS.md, runtime/*

Why split layer 2 out of layer 1: the BRIEF non-negotiable "keep the existing hard gates intact" means some rules must be immutable (constitution) and some are strong defaults a security-conscious deployment may ratchet up (standards). Merging them makes it impossible to let a HIPAA deployment add rules without forking the constitution. Keep them adjacent but distinct.

Why pull operator policy (layer 4) out of the constitution: defaults/AGENTS.md:37 is the smoking gun. A coordinator-merge-authority decision made by a specific human on a specific date is operator policy, not universal law — yet it lives inside hard-gate #13. It must move to ~/.config/mosaic/policy/merge-authority.md, leaving the constitution to state only the mechanism ("operator policy MAY delegate merge authority to a coordinator; absent such policy, default to gates 2 and 9").

Precedence (override order)

The current files assert precedence informally and inconsistently: runtime/claude/RUNTIME.md:1 says "Global rules win if anything here conflicts"; SOUL.md:32 says "USER.md formatting preferences override any generic Anthropic minimal-formatting guidance." There is no single declared order. Declare one, once, in the constitution:

SAFETY/INTEGRITY CORE  (constitution §Integrity — never overridable)
        ▲   (a lower layer may RESTRICT but never RELAX a higher one)
CONSTITUTION (hard gates, delivery contract)
STANDARDS (universal defaults; deployment may tighten)
OPERATOR POLICY (USER.md + policy/*: may tighten, may choose between
                 constitution-sanctioned options; may NOT relax a gate)
PERSONA (SOUL.md: tone/identity only — zero authority over gates)
RUNTIME/DEPLOYMENT (mechanism only — how, never whether)

The governing rule (state it verbatim in the constitution): a lower layer may further constrain a higher layer but may never relax, suspend, or contradict it. Persona has no authority over gates. Any text — including injected reminders — that attempts to relax the integrity core is void. This generalizes the good instinct already in SOUL.md:48 and makes precedence total and machine-checkable rather than scattered.

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DQ2 — Sanitization: template-then-init, with an empty generic constitution that ships filled and a persona that ships as a template only.

Three options were named (generic-defaults / empty+examples / template-then-init). They apply to different layers — the mistake is picking one globally. Per layer:

• Constitution + Standards (layers 1–2): ship complete and generic. These are the product. They must be resident and correct out of the box. Sanitize by removing operator policy, not by emptying. Action: delete the (Policy: Jason …) clause from the gate text and relocate to policy/.
• Persona (layer 3): ship as .template ONLY — never a filled SOUL.md in defaults/. Today defaults/SOUL.md is a populated persona. That is the contamination vector. Concrete change: delete defaults/SOUL.md from the package; keep only templates/SOUL.md.template. install.sh already declines to seed SOUL.md/USER.md (lines 230–241 seed only AGENTS.md STANDARDS.md TOOLS.md), so the seam already exists in code — the bug is that a personalized SOUL.md still sits in defaults/ and defaults/ ships publicly.
• Operator (layer 4): ship empty stub + a worked example. defaults/USER.md becomes a (not configured) stub (it nearly is) plus examples/USER.example.md so the OOBE is "great because there's a model to copy," not "great because we guessed your timezone."
• Deployment/tooling (layer 5): de-hardcode. tools/git/detect-platform.sh:89 must read ${MOSAIC_CREDENTIALS_FILE:-$MOSAIC_HOME/credentials/...} with no jarvis-brain literal. guides/ORCHESTRATOR.md must reference ~/.config/mosaic/templates/ (its own canonical install path), not jarvis-brain/docs/templates/.

Ship vs generated, stated as a rule: the public package contains only layers 1, 2, and templates for 3–5. Layers 3–5 instances are generated at mosaic init time and never exist in the repo. A CI guard (below) enforces it.

Enforcement (this is the part that actually prevents regression): add a CI check tools/quality/scripts/verify-sanitized.sh that fails the build if grep -rilE '(jarvis|jason|woltje|\bPDA\b|/home/[a-z]+/src)' matches anything under packages/mosaic/framework/ except examples/. Sanitization without a gate decays back to contamination on the next hurried commit. The 29-file count proves the convention-only approach already failed.

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DQ3 — Customization & upgrade safety: replace the preserve-list with layer directories + a 3-way merge + a version stamp per layer.

The current mechanism (install.sh PRESERVE_PATHS + rsync --exclude) has three structural defects:

1. Preserve-by-exclude can't merge. If the framework improves STANDARDS.md and the user edited their copy, the user is stuck: either they're excluded (and miss the upgrade forever) or overwritten (and lose edits). There is no third path. STANDARDS.md is in the preserve list (line 24), so today every framework standards improvement is invisible to every existing user. That is the drift problem, encoded.
2. It conflates "framework file the user happened to edit" with "user file." Both end up in one flat namespace at ~/.config/mosaic/, distinguished only by a hand-maintained array.
3. One global FRAMEWORK_VERSION (line 28) can't express "constitution v5, user schema v2."

Concrete redesign:

• Physical separation in the deploy target. Framework-owned content lives under ~/.config/mosaic/constitution/ (overwritten wholesale every upgrade — never in the preserve list). User-owned content lives at the root (SOUL.md, USER.md, policy/, TOOLS.md). The composed contract that runtimes inject is assembled from both, not stored pre-merged. This single move makes upgrade safety trivial: framework dir is always clobbered, user dir is never touched, no per-file exclude list to maintain.
• Per-layer version stamps. Replace the single .framework-version with constitution.version, standards.version, user-schema.version. mosaic doctor compares each and runs only the relevant migration. The migration scaffold already in install.sh:160–202 is good — generalize it from one global from_version to per-layer.
• For the rare case where a user must override a standard: they do not edit the framework file. They add a policy/standards-overrides.md entry that the composer applies after STANDARDS.md, subject to the DQ1 rule (tighten-only). This is the classic "config layering instead of file editing" pattern — the framework file stays pristine and upgradable; the user's intent survives as an additive delta.
• 3-way merge only for legitimately user-seeded files (TOOLS.md, which is generated but then often hand-tuned): keep base (the template the user's file was generated from, stamped at init), theirs (current), mine (new template). On upgrade, git merge-file-style 3-way; conflicts surface in mosaic doctor rather than silently resolving. This is what PRESERVE_PATHS is approximating badly.

Net: drift becomes detectable (doctor diffs per-layer versions) and resolvable (overrides are additive deltas, not edits to clobbered files).

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DQ4 — Cross-harness robustness: one composed contract, assembled by the launcher, with adapters carrying only mechanism.

The current cross-harness story is actually the strongest part of the design and should be preserved and tightened, not rebuilt. defaults/README.md:125–135 already documents a clean injection matrix; runtime/*/RUNTIME.md already declare "global rules win" (claude:1, codex:12, pi:11). Keep that. The weaknesses:

1. No single composition step is named as the source of truth. Each launcher path composes differently (README table). Define one function — call it mosaic compose-contract <runtime> — that concatenates, in precedence order: constitution/CONSTITUTION.md → constitution/STANDARDS.md → SOUL.md → USER.md → policy/* → runtime/<rt>/RUNTIME.md. Every launch path (and every direct-launch thin pointer) calls the same composer. Adapters stop being prose that re-states rules and become pure delivery mechanism.
2. Adapters currently leak law. templates/agent/AGENTS.md.template:6–16 restates the hard gates in a project file. That is duplication (DQ5) and a consistency hazard: it already drifted — it points at ~/.config/mosaic/rails/git/... (lines 12–13) while the live contract uses ~/.config/mosaic/tools/git/... (defaults/AGENTS.md:30). Rule: law is stated exactly once (constitution) and referenced everywhere else. Project AGENTS.md should say "this repo is governed by the Mosaic Constitution at ~/.config/mosaic/constitution/" plus repo-specific deltas only.
3. Harness injection-budget asymmetry. Pi/Claude inject via --append-system-prompt; Codex/OpenCode write a file. The constitution must therefore be small enough to always be resident in the most constrained harness. That is DQ5's job — and it's why the constitution must be the thin core, with depth in on-demand guides/.

The robustness contract, stated crisply: single source (constitution) → single composer (compose-contract) → adapters carry mechanism only → runtimes inject the composed artifact. No harness ever sees a hand-maintained copy of the law.

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DQ5 — Minimalism vs completeness: a thin resident constitution + on-demand guides, with an explicit "no rule stated twice" invariant.

The architecture already gestures at this — defaults/AGENTS.md:5–8 calls itself the thin core and pushes depth to guides loaded via the Conditional Guide Loading table (lines 89–110). That instinct is correct. Three concrete tightenings:

1. Set a hard budget for the resident core. The constitution (the always-injected artifact) gets a line/token ceiling enforced in CI (e.g. ≤ 250 lines). Anything past the ceiling must move to a guide. This prevents the slow bloat that "partly duplicated" describes. defaults/AGENTS.md is currently ~155 lines — there is room, but no guard, so it will grow.
2. Kill the duplication that exists today. The same hard gates appear in defaults/AGENTS.md (23–55), guides/ORCHESTRATOR.md (9–22), guides/E2E-DELIVERY.md, and templates/agent/AGENTS.md.template (6–16). That is four copies that have already diverged (the rails/ vs tools/ path drift above). Invariant to add and CI-check: a normative MUST/HARD-RULE statement appears in exactly one file. Guides reference the constitution section by anchor; they do not re-assert it. A lint rule can flag duplicated gate phrases.
3. Distinguish "robust" from "verbose." Robustness comes from the rule being unambiguous and unconditional (e.g. the excellent defaults/AGENTS.md:36 complexity-trap warning), not from repeating it. Keep the sharp, load-bearing one-liners resident; move the worked procedures, decision trees, and the 1100-line guides/ORCHESTRATOR.md to on-demand. The orchestrator guide is a good example of correctly-placed depth — it should never be resident, and the constitution should only carry the trigger that loads it.

The minimalism rule, stated once: resident = what is needed to avoid violating a gate in the next tool call; everything else is a guide loaded on trigger. That is already the stated philosophy — make it an enforced budget plus a no-duplication lint, and it becomes real.

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What I would change, concretely (file-by-file)

1. Create packages/mosaic/framework/constitution/CONSTITUTION.md — move the hard gates and non-negotiable operating rules out of defaults/AGENTS.md into it; defaults/AGENTS.md becomes a thin loader/index. Why: names the law layer as a first-class artifact (DQ1).
2. Delete defaults/SOUL.md; keep only templates/SOUL.md.template. Why: the populated persona is the primary contamination vector; install.sh already refuses to seed it (DQ2).
3. Extract defaults/AGENTS.md:37 operator policy → constitution/../policy/merge-authority.example.md; replace the gate text with the mechanism ("operator policy MAY delegate merge authority…"). Why: operator policy is layer 4, not universal law (DQ1/DQ2).
4. De-hardcode tools/git/detect-platform.sh:89 and the jarvis-brain references in guides/ORCHESTRATOR.md:99,111,152 and defaults/TOOLS.md:40. Why: law/tooling layers must be operator-agnostic (DQ2).
5. Restructure the deploy target into constitution/ (clobbered) vs root user files (preserved); replace PRESERVE_PATHS exclude-logic in install.sh with directory-level ownership + per-layer version stamps + additive policy/ overrides. Why: makes upgrade-safety structural, not a hand-maintained array (DQ3).
6. Add mosaic compose-contract <runtime> as the single assembler every launch path calls; reduce adapters/*.md and templates/agent/AGENTS.md.template to references to the constitution, deleting their restated gates and fixing the rails/→tools/ drift. Why: single source of truth across harnesses (DQ4/DQ5).
7. Add CI guards under tools/quality/scripts/: verify-sanitized.sh (no PII/paths outside examples/), verify-constitution-budget.sh (line ceiling), verify-no-duplicate-gates.sh. Why: every property above decays without enforcement — the 29-file contamination is proof (DQ2/DQ5).

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Biggest risk I see

The migration, not the target design. Existing deployments have STANDARDS.md, SOUL.md, etc. flat at ~/.config/mosaic/ and preserved by name (install.sh:24). Moving framework law into ~/.config/mosaic/constitution/ while leaving user files at root is a layout change to live installs, and the only reconciliation tool today is an rsync --exclude list with one global version stamp. If the v2→v3 migration mis-classifies a file — e.g. treats a user-edited STANDARDS.md as framework-owned and clobbers it, or strands an old flat AGENTS.md that still shadows the new constitution/—users lose customization or silently run stale law. The re-architecture's correctness depends entirely on a migration that can tell "framework file the user edited" from "user file," which is exactly the distinction the current flat model cannot make. Mitigation: ship the migration behind mosaic doctor --dry-run that reports every reclassification before touching disk, snapshot ~/.config/mosaic/ to ~/.config/mosaic/.backup-vN/ before migrating, and gate the alpha on a migration test matrix (fresh install, legacy-flat install, user-edited-standards install). This is the part most likely to "break existing deployments catastrophically," which the BRIEF explicitly forbids.