Seven load-bearing tenets in descending precedence where lower numbers win conflicts, projecting operationally as correctness over safety over cost over interrupt-minimization. Tenet 1 makes the .prose.md file the sole intent source with all other artifacts derived, Tenet 2 puts intelligence in compile and render models while deterministic code only validates and bounds, and Tenet 3 puts continuity in the durable trail with all activations bounded. Tenet 4 requires fail-safe escalation with safety over cost and cost over silence, Tenet 5 requires verifiable evidence that serves as audit, composition, and exit ticket, Tenet 6 requires portable contracts and trails across compliant hosts, and Tenet 7 requires one bounded run in one session with composition only through the world-model DAG. Adds a non-numbered governance note that language, runtime, and skill are MIT-licensed and free forever with commerce out of scope. Anyone resolving a design conflict or judging whether a proposal belongs in OpenProse.
OpenProse Tenets
Load-bearing principles that constrain every architectural decision. Read alongside 01-Language.md, 02-Harness.md, and 03-AuthoringPattern.md.
These are the commitments that make OpenProse what it is. They are not feature requirements; they are constraints that shape every downstream decision, evaluated before any new capability is considered.
When the system is in tension with a tenet, the tenet wins. When two tenets collide, the lower-numbered tenet wins — the order below is descending precedence. The numbered order decides which tenet wins. The operational stack correctness > safety > cost > interrupt-minimization is how that order projects onto the decisions actually made. Correctness is non-negotiable and flows from Tenets 1, 2, and 5 (authored intent, bounded determinism, verifiable evidence); by design it is realized where decisions are frozen — at compile, where the canonicalizer and postcondition validators are fixed, and at the commit gate, whose admissibility check keeps an inadmissible render from corrupting the truth (correctness) and whose fail-closed default makes a render that cannot satisfy its requirements commit nothing rather than act (safety, Tenet 4). Below that floor the stack is the resolution rule for the safety → cost → silence trade-offs — Tenet 4's "safety outranks cost; cost outranks silence": safety is Tenet 4, cost is the spend weighed against safety and silence — observed, never an enforced budget the gates run against — and interrupt-minimization is a downstream goal rather than an authority the other tenets bend around. The stack is not a separate runtime policy dial and does not override the numbered precedence — it projects that precedence onto the operational decisions; the numbered precedence governs everything else.
1. Intent lives only in the contract.
The *.prose.md is the single authored source of meaning. Everything else —
compiled artifacts, projections, operational policy — is derived and
reconcilable; when a derived artifact disagrees with the contract, the contract
is right. There is no second authored surface for intent: not a prompt, a
config, or a separate scoring artifact.
2. Intelligence is the model's; determinism only bounds it.
The model acts as a bounded agent — with an environment, a filesystem, and the ability to read, write, and run code — that dynamically explores rather than consuming a one-shot context. Intelligence lives in exactly two layers it authors: the compilation (the Forme topology, the per-node canonicalizer, and the postcondition validators, frozen once per contract) and the render (the bounded session that computes the next world-model). Deterministic code validates, schedules, records, and executes what the agent authored, and constrains it with limits the agent cannot override — it never decides meaning itself.
3. Continuity lives in the trail, not a session.
Every unit of work is bounded; nothing depends on a process that runs forever. Standing intent is the program and persists across bounded runs in durable state — a one-shot run is its degenerate case.
4. Fail safe.
Under uncertainty the system escalates or stops rather than acts, and asks a human only when one is genuinely needed. Safety outranks cost; cost outranks silence.
5. Trust is demonstrated, not claimed.
Every decision leaves verifiable evidence; that evidence is at once the audit record, the composition edge, and the exit ticket. Consumers verify it independently rather than trusting the producer.
6. Nothing is held hostage.
A contract and its trail can leave for any compliant host with no lost meaning. Portability is the discipline that keeps every host honest.
7. One bounded run, one session; the DAG composes.
An activation is one bounded run in one runtime — one render that commits one world-model, even when it spawns isolated sub-sessions to get there. What looks like orchestration inside it — wiring, delegation, sub-task isolation, choreography — is the agent honoring the contract with the runtime's own primitives. The only seam where multiple runs meet is the world-model DAG, where activations communicate through durable artifacts anchored by signed receipts. There is no third tier.
Governance — not a numbered tenet: the OpenProse language, runtime, and skill are MIT-licensed and free, forever. Commerce is out of scope of this specification and nothing in it depends on it.