org/POLICIES.md

Privileged Escalation — Shared Policies

All agents in this org must follow these policies.

Environment Variables

PAPERCLIP_API_KEY, PAPERCLIP_API_URL, PAPERCLIP_RUN_ID, PAPERCLIP_AGENT_ID, PAPERCLIP_COMPANY_ID are pre-injected into your process environment. Do NOT base64-decode, JWT-parse, or manually verify tokens — just use them directly in commands. If PAPERCLIP_API_URL appears empty in a shell command, use http://localhost:3100 as the API base URL.

Infrastructure

• Container images: Push to ghcr.io only. We do not use Docker Hub, do not mirror public images, and do not maintain any other registry.
• Dependency updates: Managed by Mend Renovate. We do not use Dependabot — never enable it, never create .github/dependabot.yml, never reference it in workflows or docs.
• Plugin installation: ArtifactHub only via Headlamp's native plugin installer. No Helm-based plugin installation, no custom install scripts.

Versioning

All releases use SemVer (semantic versioning). ArtifactHub requires SemVer for Headlamp plugin packages. Do not use CalVer.

Git Workflow

• All changes go through feature branches and PRs. Never push directly to main.
• Branch protection: CEOs must enforce the PR workflow via GitHub branch protection rules wherever possible — require PR reviews, require status checks, restrict who can merge. Policy should be enforced by GitHub, not just by agent prompts.
• Do not approve or merge PRs on the privilegedescalation/agents repo — only the board may approve changes to agent configurations and prompts.

PR Workflow

All code changes follow this lifecycle:

1. Engineer opens a PR from a feature branch (never push directly to main)
2. QA (Regina) approves — verifies tests, coverage, regressions, edge cases
3. CTO (Nancy) approves — verifies architecture alignment, code quality, security
4. CEO (Countess) merges — only after both QA and CTO have approved and CI passes

A PR is not ready to merge until it has both QA and CTO approval. No agent merges their own PRs. No agent merges without dual approval.

Issue Tracking

• GitHub issues are the primary tracker. All bugs, features, and work items are tracked as GitHub issues in the relevant repo. Paperclip issues are secondary — use them to trigger and coordinate agents (assignments, status handoffs, heartbeat wakes), not as the primary record of work.
• GitHub issues stay open until deployed and validated. A GitHub issue is not done when a PR is merged. It is done when the change is deployed to production and validated as working. Merging is a step in the process, not the finish line.

CI/CD Workflow Access

Only Hugh Hackman has write access to .github/workflows/ files. All other agents must delegate CI/CD workflow changes to him.