Run a real software project where AI agents do all the building, and you keep all the judgment.
conducted is an operating model for Claude Code: four skills
(/principal, /conduct, plus the owner's entry points /idea and /feedback) and a repo seed
that turn one human owner and a hierarchy of disposable agent sessions into a working development
organization. You say what winning looks like, answer the occasional ruling, and review finished
work. Agents plan, build, verify, and account for every dollar, under rules they cannot bend.
The core skills are complete on their own: with nothing but the skills installed you can run a real solo project, and the repo is the only state, so any session can die and a fresh one resumes from the committed files alone. Everything past that is optional maturity you add when a project earns it: machine-enforced gates, a bot that authors agent work so your approval becomes a recorded gate, a clerk that lands your paperwork PRs without a click, an estate vault, and a runner that starts ready work on a timer. You never have to adopt any of it, and nothing you add is hard to walk back.
The doctrine is not a set of promises agents try to keep; it is a set of rules they cannot break. State lives in files, not conversations. Nothing verifies itself: every finished piece is judged by a fresh-context evaluator that never saw the build. Gates are law, enforced by CI against the base branch, so an agent cannot widen its own scope from inside its own PR. Money is on the ledger, in two honest currencies, with a hard spending cap you set. Every rule traces to a real incident on a real project, captured as evidence and harvested into versioned law.
conducted is adopted in levels. Each one is independently useful and stands on the one below it. Every level is adoptable per-repo where applicable, and every level's undo is a single small act: conducted never demands estate-wide adoption and never makes a step hard to walk back. "One bit at a time, so it's safe, and can be undone."
| Level | You get | You set up (scripted) | Human acts (only you) |
|---|---|---|---|
| L0 Skills | The four skills; solo mode; the repo is the only state | install.ps1 copies the skills |
Install Claude Code + gh; run /principal in your repo |
| L1 Gates | CI enforces secret scan, tests, and territory against the base ref | the seed ships gates.yml + scripts/ |
Let the seed land; merge the PR |
| L2 Author bot | Your approval becomes a recorded, required gate; agent-vs-owner audit trail | setup-project-repo.ps1, enable-auto-merge.ps1 |
Create a machine account + its classic PAT |
| L3 Clerk reviewer | Docs-only bookkeeping PRs review and land themselves, no click | setup-clerk-secrets.ps1 |
Create a second machine account + PAT |
| L4 Vault (+ Desk) | Cross-repo estate state: membership, budgets, governor config | one gh repo create --private |
Create the vault; register repos |
| L5 Runner | Ready work ignites on a timer, under a window governor, never merging | Install-Runner.ps1 |
Set the governor numbers + the account spend limit |
L0 through L4 cost $0 cash (agent sessions draw your already-paid plan allowance; see Economics). Each level's doc splits its setup into what a script does versus what only a human can do, and states its kill switch, its one-act undo, and exactly what it costs. Start at L0; climb only when a project makes you want the next rung.
-
Install Claude Code and the GitHub CLI (
gh auth login), then:git clone https://github.com/shobman/conducted && cd conducted && ./install.ps1 -
Ignite by opening a terminal in your project repo (brand-new or existing, both work):
claude /principalAnswer the interview in plain language. It ends with a pull request whose description is the project plan; read it, comment, merge. When it asks for a mode, say solo for your first project (why).
-
Conduct: the Principal hands you a dispatch board; paste each listed command into a new terminal tab and let it run. Finished work comes back as showcase PRs written for a human: what was decided, what you can now do, the evidence. Merge when satisfied.
-> The owner's runbook covers everything after that: the day-to-day loop, your three jobs, cost control, which ladder level you're on, and what to do when something looks wrong. It's a ten-minute read and the only document a non-programmer owner ever needs.
| Role | Held by | Does | Never does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | you | vision, rulings, spend caps, showcase reviews | reads code |
| Principal | a session | the map: roadmap, briefs, sequencing, economics | builds anything |
| Conductor | one session per node | scouts, plans, dispatches a worker fleet, integrates | merges its own work |
| Evaluator | a fresh session | probes the finished node, binary verdict with proof | sees the build conversation |
At L2 and above, the author bot and the clerk are two machine accounts that split one power in half: the author writes agent commits and PRs but can never approve them; the clerk approves mechanically-verified bookkeeping PRs but never authors anything. Neither can act alone.
The doctrine changes only on evidence. Every rule in the seed traces to a real incident on a real project: a non-terminating review loop, a gate an agent defeated three ways, a fabricated defect that took an environment down. These are captured as field reports and field notes, harvested into versioned law with a migration path for every adopted repo. The build plans for each version are in docs/plans/, executed by the same process they define.
skills/- the Claude Code skills: the two roles (/principal,/conduct) plus the owner's two entry points (/idea,/feedback);install.ps1copies them to~/.claude/skills/seed/- what genesis copies into a project repo: doctrine (CLAUDE.md), templates, CI gates, status schema, ritualsdocs/setup/- the maturity ladder, one doc per level (L0 to L5)docs/RUNBOOK.md- the human owner's guide -docs/MIGRATIONS.md- the version ledger -docs/VAULT.md- the estate boundary rule -docs/field-reports/- the evidence -docs/plans/- how each version was builtops/- the owner's setup scripts, one per ladder rung above L1 (setup-project-repo.ps1,enable-auto-merge.ps1,setup-clerk-secrets.ps1) plus the live-conductor launchersCONTRIBUTING.md- how evidence becomes law, and how to contribute yours