# Constitution — Hermes Living Context

This document is the small, rarely-changing set of principles that governs how this catalog evolves. If a proposed change conflicts with a principle here, the principle wins — update the constitution deliberately, don't work around it silently.

## 1. Purpose

This catalog exists to help one person (and their family and teams) learn to leverage Hermes Agent in digestible, high-impact chunks — across personal, work, and family contexts — and to stay current as Hermes features and community playbooks evolve.

## 2. Who it's for

- **Primary reader:** the project owner, learning and applying playbooks day to day.
- **Secondary readers:** family members and team members who benefit from a playbook without needing to learn Hermes internals.
- Some readers do not have English as a first language — see the plain-language rule below.

## 3. Plain language rule (non-negotiable)

Every entry's **Impact** and **Why** columns must pass the `plain-language` Hermes skill:
reading age ~11, sentences under 25 words, no jargon without a first-use explanation, active voice, one idea per sentence. Run new or edited rows through the skill before committing.

## 4. What counts as "impactful enough to add"

A new row only gets added if it meets at least one of:

- It automates something that previously took manual, repeated effort (a chore, a report, a reminder).
- It closes a gap between "Hermes *can* do this" and "we actually use it."
- It is a pattern worth repeating across more than one context (personal, work, or family).

Interesting-but-unused features do not belong in the catalog — this is a log of what's *actually working*, not a feature wishlist.

## 5. The "Why" discipline (borrowed from openspec, scaled down)

Every catalog row must carry a one-line **Why** — the reason this playbook earned a place, not just what it does. This is the audit trail: future readers (including future you) should be able to tell *why* something was added without digging through chat history.

## 6. Skill-linking (borrowed from superpowers / native to Hermes)

If a playbook is used often enough to deserve a reusable procedure, promote it to a real Hermes skill (`~/.hermes/skills/` or the profile-local skills dir) rather than re-describing its logic in the catalog. The catalog row should then **link to the skill by name**, not duplicate its content. Example: the `plain-language` skill is linked from any row whose Impact text needed simplifying.

## 7. Update cadence

- **Weekly (10 min):** skim `https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/llms.txt` for new features; add a row if something now qualifies under §4.
- **Monthly:** review all rows — retire ones no longer in active use, consolidate duplicates, confirm skill links still resolve.
- **On every new skill creation:** add or update the catalog row that triggered it.

## 8. Changing this constitution

Amendments are rare and deliberate. Edit this file directly, note the change in the commit message (e.g. `constitution: add rule on X`), and don't let the catalog format drift without updating §3–§6 to match.