epic: founder governance — enforce goals/priorities/directives authority

[kokevidaurre]

Goal

Make squad governance files (goals, priorities, directives) authoritative — agents cannot rewrite them. Today the rule exists as convention but nothing enforces it, so agents drift over time and contradict the founder's intent.

Problem

File	Who should write	Who can write today
directives.md	Founder + Cofounder	Anyone (no enforcement)
goals.md	Founder + Cofounder	Anyone — agents reset to fit their own logic
priorities.md	Founder + Cofounder	Anyone
SQUAD.md	Founder (atemporal identity)	Anyone
state.md, learnings/	Worker agents	Worker agents (correct)

The convention is documented in private memory, but is not encoded as a runtime constraint. Drift happens — agents have been observed resetting goals to fit their own logic, contradicting directives, and creating goals that conflict with the founder's roadmap.

Proposed solution — three layers

Layer 1 — Guardrail hook (enforcement)

Extend templates/guardrail.json with PreToolUse matchers for Edit and Write that block agent writes to:

• **/goals.md
• **/priorities.md
• **/directives.md
• **/SQUAD.md

Exit code 2 with a clear message telling the agent to propose changes via the .squads/proposed/ channel instead. The founder's own Claude Code sessions are not affected (they run outside the agent guardrail).

Layer 2 — Proposal channel (defer, not block)

Agents can suggest updates by writing to .squads/proposed/<file>-<timestamp>.md. Founder reviews on a cadence (weekly?) and merges accepted proposals into the canonical files. No write to canonical files.

Document the convention in a README.md inside the proposed directory.

Layer 3 — Coherence command

New CLI command: squads coherence — reports drift between layers:

• Do all squad goals align with directives.md?
• Are priorities grounded in goals?
• Are any governance files stale (>14 days)?
• Are any proposed changes pending founder review?

Run weekly. Surfaces drift before it accumulates.

Sequencing

1. PR-1 (this week, 1h): Guardrail hook update + docs. Highest leverage.
2. PR-2 (this week, 1h): .squads/proposed/ channel scaffold + README.
3. PR-3 (next week, 3-4h): squads coherence command.
4. PR-4 (this week, 1h): Goal-linked GitHub issue template — every agent-created issue must reference a goal ID.

Out of scope

• Multi-tenant governance (different roles within the founder's team)
• Cryptographic signing of governance files
• Approval workflow UI

Acceptance criteria

• An agent attempting to Edit or Write a governance file is blocked with a clear message
• Founder editing the same files works normally
• .squads/proposed/ documented as the suggestion channel
• squads coherence reports actionable drift
• Goal-linked issue template enforces traceability