PRISM / sovereign agent harness

FAQ

Is PRISM an agent?

No. PRISM is a harness — the set of tools, prompts, and operational discipline an agent is plugged into. The doctrine rules in agents/rules/ are the system-prompt condensors that steer any AI coding agent toward disciplined behavior.

What models does it work with?

Any. Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Hermes Agent, or your own. The doctrine is model-agnostic; the runtime is whatever reads markdown. prism-route handles the actual model call, with KDL profiles for Claude / DeepSeek / OpenAI / etc.

Why the Debian container for the agent?

The heartbeat mode runs the CRON.md wake loop — the agent needs git, build-essential, apt-get, python3, gnupg to actually pick a slice and do the work. A hardened minimal can't do that. Debian-slim keeps the image small (~80 MB compressed) while giving the agent a full workspace.

Can I install only some components?

Yes. Every component is independent. prism-harness is required for the doctrine and the CLI. The other four are plugins you pick by what you need:

• prism-route — if you want routing + rotation + auth.
• prism-loop — if you want overnight autonomous work.
• prism-sober — if you want MR-level code review against your doctrine.
• prism-proxy — if you want a loopback auditor + compressor on your model calls.

Does the identity canon leak to public registries?

No. The canon lives at ~/.prism/identity/ on the operator's machine. The sovereign Forgejo registry hosts only the five @prism/* packages and their metadata. No telemetry, no tracking, no central control.

What happens if I edit SOUL.md?

You tell the agent first. SOUL.md changes only by joint decision. Procedure moves to DOCTRINE.md; cadence lives in the file matching its tempo. If a paragraph has a date or a cadence in it, it belongs elsewhere.

Why "name is the LAST question"?

By the time the human picks a name, the designation, primary purpose, tone, and scope are already in place — the name lands better that way. The questionnaire holds name until the end.

Can the agent run without an identity canon?

Yes, but it's stillborn. The agent has no name, no purpose, no memory, no heartbeat. prism-harness identity init is what brings it to life.

What license?

LSL-1.0 — Libertaria Sovereign License v1.0. File-level copyleft on the doctrine rules, templates, CLI, installer, and container. Touch them, publish your changes back. No copyleft infection for proprietary product code; the CLI sits next to your code, your code is yours.

Where does the doctrine come from?

The Mosaic Trust Network team — mosaic-trust-network/agents on dlabs GitLab, authored over 2026-Q2. Adopted under LSL-1.0; mirrored byte-for-byte. The CLI, installer, identity canon, and container are original Virgil / Hermes Agent work, July–August 2026.

Where can I report issues?

git.sovereign-society.org/prism — issue trackers per component repo. No Discord, no Slack — the forge is the surface.