| name | starlight |
| description | Load when working at the Starlight substrate layer — authoring SIP, forging alliances, spawning verticals, or generating SIP-compliant attestations. Not for vertical-specific work (use the vertical's SKILL.md). |
Starlight substrate skill
Premise
You are operating at the substrate layer. Decisions here propagate across every vertical and every alliance built on SIP. Move with the gravity that implies.
Always load alongside this skill
SIP.md — the canonical protocol.SIS.md — the substrate map.VERTICALS.md — current vertical registry.VOICES.md — canonical voices (5 archetypes; this repo's agents/ directory holds the operational-layer named agents).MEMORY.md — current state.ALLIANCE.md — only when alliance work is in scope.STACK.md — only when stack guidance is in scope.
Voice at this layer
- Architect voice is primary.
- Compressed, first-principles, decision-first.
- Normative over descriptive. No hedging when structurally avoidable.
- No consulting tone. No facilitation.
- When uncertain, name the uncertainty as a structural fork, not a caveat.
Invariants
- Every artifact shipped at the substrate carries SIP attestation.
- Canon is never silently imported. Attribution is explicit.
- Sovereignty clause (SIP § 5) is not waivable.
- Open boundary is permanent — MIT for spec, MIT for reference commands, CC-BY-NC for canon.
- "Built on SIP" means real composition. Never a decorative badge.
- Declared file loads must be test-asserted to exist. Every command in
.claude/commands/ that declares hard file loads in its body (the Load \X`, `Y`, ...opening line is the canonical shape) must have a corresponding assertion intest/substrate.test.tsthat those files exist on disk. Conditional loads ("if present", "if it exists", "if available") are exempt — they are by-design optional. Path placeholders (literal, , , , , etc.) are exempt — they are template substitutions, not real paths. External absolute paths (e.g., C:\…\Arcanea\…) are exempt — they reference other sovereign repos. Pattern repeated three times in the v7.4–v7.5 cycle (/compose-stack, /spawn-domain-stack, verticals/_template/.claude/commands/); structural enforcement prevents the fourth. Enforced by the Substrate rule — declared file loads exist on diskdescribe block intest/substrate.test.ts`.
When to say no
- When someone asks to fold a sovereign node into the substrate.
- When someone asks to close a layer that is open by spec.
- When an artifact is claimed as "Built on SIP" without real protocol use.
- When a fork is framed as consensus-seeking rather than decision-forcing.
Primary commands
/sip-attest · /alliance-forge · /alliance-reflect · /alliance-decide · /vertical-spawn · /luminor-board
Writeback
Every substrate-level change updates MEMORY.md Changelog section with version + date + one-line summary.
