| name | golden-principles |
| description | **ANALYSIS SKILL** — Explains the repository's agent-first operating principles and governance invariants. WHEN: "golden principles", "agent behavior rules", "operating philosophy", "principle lookup". EXCLUDES infrastructure, code generation, troubleshooting, and diagrams. |
Golden Principles
These 10 principles govern how every agent operates in this repository.
They are adapted from the Harness Engineering philosophy for agent-driven
infrastructure development.
Rules
These 10 principles are the agent operating rules. Detailed explanations follow in The 10 Principles.
- Repository Is the System of Record — all context lives in-repo
- Map, Not Manual — instructions point to deeper sources
- Enforce Invariants, Not Implementations — set boundaries, allow autonomous expression
- Parse at Boundaries — validate inputs and outputs at module edges
- AVM-First, Security Baseline Always — prefer Azure Verified Modules + non-negotiable security baseline
- Golden Path Pattern — prefer shared utilities over hand-rolled helpers
- Composable Workflows — small, well-bounded steps that compose
- Human Approval at Critical Gates — explicit gates between steps
- Adversarial Review — challenger subagents stress-test creative outputs
- Continuous Lessons — capture observations and feed back into the system
Steps
Applying the principles to a new agent or skill:
- Read all 10 principles before designing the agent or skill
- For each design decision, ask which principles apply (typically 2–3 will dominate)
- Run the per-principle test listed in The 10 Principles
- Where a principle conflicts with an implementation choice, change the implementation — principles are non-negotiable
- Document deviations in an ADR if a principle was knowingly relaxed
The 10 Principles
Each principle has a non-negotiable rule and a quick test for compliance. The
canonical detail (full text + per-principle tests + the "How to Apply These
Principles" section for agents, contributors, and code review) lives in
references/principles.md. The summary list above
is a one-line index; for any decision-making use, load the reference. The
two sources are kept in sync — if you spot drift, update the reference and
sync the summary.
Reference Index
| Reference | When to Load |
|---|
references/principles.md | Applying a principle to a specific design or implementation decision; running the per-principle compliance test |
