The Agentic Constitution Format

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{
  "title": "The Agentic Constitution Format",
  "slug": "agentic-constitution-format",
  "objectNumber": 2,
  "version": "1.0",
  "status": "published",
  "source": "Series One · Article 4 — defended in EXA vs. SDD",
  "summary": "The structured, five-field syntax for a constraint block inside an Agentic Constitution: TRIGGER, AGENT MUST, AGENT MUST NOT, COST IF RENDERED INCORRECTLY, and DISCOVERY SOURCE. It is the machine-readable unit an AI coding agent executes against directly, replacing the annotated screen a developer once interpreted by hand.",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-07-03",
  "changelog": [
    {
      "date": "2026-07-01",
      "note": "Object scaffolded: frontmatter and schema in place. Worked example and the constraint-block payload are still pending editorial work (Build Ledger §3.3) — status stays draft, and the page is not built in production, until both are written."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-03",
      "note": "First publication. Worked example and constraint-block payload populated from the published EXA vs. SDD article's 'Member Eligibility: Post-Redetermination' block — the format's founding worked example, drawn from public prose rather than invented content. Status flipped draft → published; version 0.1 → 1.0."
    }
  ],
  "type": "format",
  "tagline": "Five fields that give an experience state a trigger, a boundary, and a cost — the machine-readable unit an agent executes against, and the column no engineering constitution carries.",
  "workedExample": "The constraint block above is the format's founding worked example — 'Member Eligibility: Post-Redetermination,' first published in EXA vs. SDD (July 2026). It encodes the incident that produced it: at a regional health network, three of the four product squads owning the member-eligibility experience had forked the eligibility view off the central system, and a CMS redetermination rule change left one forked view rendering a lapsed member as active — a state every engineering gate passed, because it was never a property of the code. The block names the trigger, the required and prohibited renderings, the cost the organization carries if the surface renders wrong, and the discovery source, including the adjacent states that audit flags for review. The COST IF RENDERED INCORRECTLY field is the load-bearing difference from an engineering specification: no code-correctness format carries a column for consequence.",
  "constraintFields": {
    "trigger": "CMS redetermination rule update changes a member's coverage status",
    "agentMust": [
      "Resolve eligibility against the central system of record",
      "Render lapsed status explicitly, with effective date"
    ],
    "agentMustNot": [
      "Render a lapsed member as active under any cached or forked view"
    ],
    "costIfRenderedIncorrectly": "Claims liability; caseworker acts on false eligibility; compliance exposure. Severity: CRITICAL",
    "discoverySource": "Production incident — override audit, regional health network. Adjacent states to audit: retroactive termination, dual-eligibility, grace-period"
  }
}