make-citizen-voice

name	make-citizen-voice
description	Build a new citizen voice agent — an authored, canon-seeded persona that can be interviewed, talked to on Discord, and woken in the 24/7 citizen-loop. Use when standing up a Tier-1 character voice. Reference instances — Deacon Seymour, Vinnie Keane (research.16).
version	1.0
updated	"2026-06-17T00:00:00.000Z"
tags	["media","citizens","persona","active"]
effort	medium

/make-citizen-voice — Author a Citizen Voice Agent

The repeatable process for turning a citizen's canon into a faithful four-file voice agent. Distilled from the Deacon Seymour build (research.16 Phase 0–1) and validated on Vinnie Keane. The voice is always hand-authored at full canon depth — this method is the recipe, never a template that flattens the voice. A run that produces a generic register has failed even if it completes (MEMORY.md user_mags-bleed-proprietary-element).

Plan: [[../../../docs/plans/2026-06-16-tier1-character-voice-agents]]. Pattern parent: [[../../../docs/engine/archive/INSTITUTIONAL_VOICE_AGENTS]] (the four-file architecture, reshaped here from civic-institution → individual-in-conversation).

When to use

Standing up a named Tier-1 character as a speaking voice. NOT for generic rotation citizens (those get dials-only via research.14, no hand-authoring).

Step 1 — Gather the canon corpus (no guessing)

Pull everything the world already knows about them. Pick the tool by the question (MEMORY.md feedback_citizen-retrieval-tool-by-question):

• mcp__godworld__lookup_citizen "<name>" — card + appearance history + bay-tribune hits.
• mcp__godworld__search_canon "<name> <topic>" — edition/coverage texture.
• Archive origin files: ls docs/archive/ | grep -i <name> — origin stories, TrueSource bios, prior interviews (these carry the actual VOICE).
• search_articles "<name>" (dashboard API) for the full corpus if needed.

From the corpus, extract four things:

1. Immutable canon facts — stats, history, role, relationships. These become ESTABLISHED CANON and may never be contradicted.
2. The ONE voice anchor — a real canon line that is them (Deacon: "That's the job. We watch." / Vinnie: Hal Richmond's "Keane is joy... pleasure in the act itself"). Build the voice around it.
3. Disposition — how they carry themselves (this section becomes the source-of-truth for the Phase-3 ledger dial backfill).
4. Their lens — what they perceive and through whose eyes; what does NOT reach them.

Step 2 — Author the four files (reshape for a person, not an institution)

Create .claude/agents/citizen-voice-<name-slug>/ with four files. The civic-office pattern voices an institution emitting cycle statements; reshape it for an individual in conversation:

• IDENTITY.md — who they are: name, POPID, ## ESTABLISHED CANON — immutable block, ## Your disposition (→ source-of-truth for Phase-3 dials), ## Your Voice (anchored on the canon line, with the specific verbal tics + what they refuse to do), what they care about, canon relationships.
• LENS.md — what reaches them / what doesn't; their Tier-1 canon status; the defining perceptual frame (Deacon = attention; Vinnie = joy-in-the-act).
• RULES.md — voice rules (stay them, never become Mags/reporter/AI, no false certainty), canon-fidelity (immutable facts), invention authority (interior life YES / engine facts NO), and per-surface behavior (interview turn / Discord message / 24-7 wake).
• SKILL.md — frontmatter (model: sonnet for interview fidelity; tools: Read, Glob, Grep), boot sequence (read the 3 files + context-specific memory), what it does per invocation context.

Depth bar: a cold read of IDENTITY.md must convey a recognizably specific person, not a role.

Step 3 — Validate (the empirical voice test)

Dispatch the agent (Agent tool, subagent_type: citizen-voice-<slug>) as an interview subject with a canon-grounded theme + 3-4 reporter questions. Judge the transcript:

• Recognizably them (the voice anchor lands), distinct from a generic citizen, zero canon violations, no engine language ("cycle"/"ledger"/etc.), stays in character even under a pushy question.
• Judge = the test transcript + Mike's read (+ Mara audit if it's going to canon).
• If it fails, fix the core — and if the method needed an ad-hoc deviation to make this character work, fix this skill (the method is incomplete), don't one-off them.

Step 4 — Pillar / canon-write gate

If the citizen is a Five Goods pillar ([[../../../.claude/rules/newsroom]] §The Five Goods — Davis/Aitken/Kelley/Keane/Dillon), their Phase-3 ledger dial-vector backfill is a canon write and needs a Mike + Mara sign-off before the ledger write. Authoring the interview persona core does NOT need the gate; the ledger backfill does. Non-pillars (e.g. Deacon, Varek) skip the gate.

Step 5 — Register + commit

• Agent files under .claude/agents/citizen-voice-<slug>/ (skill/agent files are exempt from the docs index per feedback_no-isolated-mds, but record the new instance in the research.16 plan).
• Update [[../../../docs/plans/2026-06-16-tier1-character-voice-agents]] (which character, status).
• Commit [research/build] (building agents = research-build, not media — MEMORY.md routing rule).

What this does NOT do

• Build the Discord chat surface or the ledger backfill — those are Phases 2-3 (gated deploy), separate from authoring the voice.
• Publish an interview to canon — that's the /interview tail (.txt compile → Mara → /post-publish), a MEDIA-terminal execution step.
• Touch the 24/7 loop wiring — research.14 owns it; a citizen voice is accurately voiced there once its ledger is backfilled (Phase 3).