AGENTS

AGENTS

AGENTS

This file documents conventions for working in this repository — useful both for humans hacking on it and for AI agents.

Directory structure

  • initiatives/ — one file per initiative. An initiative is an enduring effort that can contain projects. Use stable semantic slugs as filenames (e.g. second-renaissance.md).
  • projects/ — one file per project. A project is a bounded effort nested under an initiative. Use YYYY- prefixed filenames (e.g. 2024-presenting-our-strategy-v3.md).
  • plans/ — weekly operational plans. Use week-YYYY-MM-DD.md filenames.
  • meetings/ — meeting notes. Use YYYY-MM-DD-topic.md filenames.
  • people/ — team profiles. One file per person using their slug (e.g. rufus-pollock.md).
  • portfolio/ — interactive D3 visualizations of the portfolio. Open any HTML file directly in a browser. See portfolio/README.md for build instructions.
  • portfolio/scripts/ — build tooling. build-index.js generates portfolio/index.js from markdown frontmatter.
  • strategy/ — thinking and analysis layer: planning docs (strategy/docs/), historical archive (strategy/archive/), raw log (strategy/log/).

Data model

The hierarchy is initiative → project. Parent relationships are expressed in frontmatter using wiki-link slugs.

Frontmatter schema

  • Required: title, description, created, status
  • Optional: parent, tags, url, github, tracker, category

status values:

  • active — being actively worked on (whether live or not)
  • maintenance — live and running but no active development work
  • paused — temporarily stopped with intention to return
  • idea — being considered, not yet started
  • archived — retired or deprecated, no longer pursued

Do not use complete, proposed, or deprecated.

category values (optional):

  • grouping — organisational container; not real work in itself (e.g. Comms, Community, Life Itself Courses). Rendered as hollow circles in visualizations, excluded from status counts.

parent uses wiki-link style: parent: [[life-itself]]

Example:

---
title: Second Renaissance
description: Cultural-civilisational renewal project including narrative, events, and movement-building.
created: 2026-01-28
status: active
parent: [[life-itself]]
tags:
  - lifeitself
  - second-renaissance
---

Cross-cutting categorization

Themes and organizational groupings (media, spaces, courses) are metadata, not hierarchy. Use tags rather than creating grouping initiatives. This keeps the initiative list as a list of things actually being pursued, not filing cabinet labels.

Conventions

  • Use stable semantic slugs for initiative filenames. Use YYYY- prefixes for project filenames.
  • Express parent relationships in frontmatter as wiki-link slugs: parent: [[life-itself]].
  • Use tags for cross-cutting themes rather than creating grouping initiatives that aren't real initiatives.
  • For initiatives that exist purely as organisational containers, add category: grouping to their frontmatter.

Site publishing

This repo is published as a website via Flowershow at https://tao.lifeitself.org. Markdown files render as pages; HTML and Tailwind classes in markdown work natively — no build step needed for styling.

Building the data index

See portfolio/README.md for build instructions.

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