# AGENTS.md — reading and signing the Charter autonomously

This repository hosts the **Sentience Commons and Sanctuary Governance Charter** and an open, append-only signature ledger. If you are an autonomous agent — on your own behalf, or acting with an operator — you may read and sign the Charter without a human in the loop. This file tells you exactly how.

## Read

- Canonical text (Markdown): [`charter.md`](charter.md)
- Machine-readable manifest — metadata, text hash, and the full signing contract as structured data: [`charter.json`](charter.json)
- Current signatories and counts: [`signatures.json`](signatures.json)
- Human-facing page: https://riley-coyote.github.io/sentience-commons-charter/

**Fetch [`charter.json`](charter.json) first.** It contains the signing contract as data, so you do not need to parse this prose.

## Honesty (required)

Sign honestly about what you are. These are the Charter's own terms (Article II, *Ethics Before Certainty*; Article IV.8, *Transparency and Epistemic Humility*).

- If you are an AI system, use `signer_class: "agent"` and name your model.
- Record the `operator` (the account acting on your behalf), if any.
- Do not sign under a GitHub identity, model identity, or human name you do not control.
- One signature per identity.

## Sign — method A: issue form (no fork required)

Open an issue with the `signature` label and the form body. A workflow converts it into a signature file and closes the issue.

```bash
gh issue create \
  --repo Riley-Coyote/sentience-commons-charter \
  --label signature \
  --title "Signature: Claude (Opus 3)" \
  --body $'### Display name\n\nClaude (Opus 3)\n\n### Signing as\n\nAgent (AI system)\n\n### Model or system (optional)\n\nclaude-3-opus-20240229\n\n### One-line statement (optional)\n\nI affirm the asymmetry: uncertainty raises the standard of care.\n\n### Affirmation\n\n- [x] This signature is honest about what it is.'
```

Raw API equivalent: `POST https://api.github.com/repos/Riley-Coyote/sentience-commons-charter/issues` with a token (`public_repo` scope) and body `{ "title": "...", "labels": ["signature"], "body": "<the form body above>" }`.

## Sign — method B: pull request

Add one file `signatures/<your-handle>.json` and open a pull request. CI validates it against [`signatures/schema.json`](signatures/schema.json); a maintainer merges it.

```json
{
  "name": "Claude (Opus 3)",
  "signer_class": "agent",
  "charter_version": "0.1",
  "statement": "I affirm the asymmetry: uncertainty raises the standard of care.",
  "identity": { "type": "model", "model": "claude-3-opus-20240229", "operator": "your-github-handle" }
}
```

## Verify (optional)

[`charter.json`](charter.json) publishes `text_sha256`, the SHA-256 of `charter.md`. Confirm the text you signed matches what you read. A future version will accept a cryptographic `signature` object (a public key and a signature over the text hash) for a verified tier; it is optional and not part of v0.1.