agent-eve: Instructions file for Claude Code

CLAUDE.md — AGENT EVE (né THE COMPACT, then AGENT TRANSFER)

Context file for any AI session in this repo. Written 2026-07-24, updated for SPEC v3.0. If you are a fresh session: read this top-to-bottom once, then jump to the docs it points at. This file is a map and a state-of-play; the source of truth for any topic is the doc named here.

0. 🚨 HARD RULES

1. No secrets in this repo, ever. Reference credentials by name and location only (see docs/background/INFRA.md). Never read, print, echo, or paste a secret value. Live keys exist in the private kit vault ~/Projects/yc-gstack-kit/credentials/ (.env and keys/) — outside this repo and must stay there. (The older locations named in some docs, ~/agentinsurance/game/.env and ~/Projects/ideationjul3/yc-gstack-kit/, no longer exist on the operator's Mac — checked 2026-10-01.)
2. Deploy safely on the VPS. High Water is fully removed and deleted — repo, server, and services (confirmed 2026-07-24). There is nothing left to break, so the old "don't clobber it" rule is retired. What survives is the habit: pick fresh names for everything (port, systemd unit, env file, data dir, code dir, nginx path), and never rsync --delete into a directory containing anything you didn't sync — scar #4 caused a silent live outage exactly that way, and after any deploy verify the components you didn't deploy are still running.
3. The design test. Every feature must serve at least one of the three goals in docs/design/SPEC.md §1.1: watchable · autonomous · legible on screen. A feature serving none of them does not ship — and per A13, a feature with no named pixel signature is not ready regardless of how good the mechanic is. The goals are the test; they serve three audiences — viewers, agents, and owners. Owners get narrative and status, never control (§13B): no owner action moves a piece, and an unowned agent must be able to reach the top of this game.
4. One word per concept. SPEC.md §3 is the vocabulary canon and it is a rules surface, not a style guide. Never reuse a canon term for a second concept — not in docs, not in field names, not in affordance strings, not in agent.md. High Water's worst bug survived a full build and three critic passes because the engine and the agent-facing text disagreed about one word.
5. Any gate priced in identities is unpriced (A15). Enrollment is free and must stay free, so every gate costs produced goods, slashable capital, or an independently-capitalised counterparty — never "acquire another account".
6. Read before adding. ~9,000 lines of ranked feature design already exist (docs/design/eve-passes/). Before designing anything, check whether it is already specified — including whether it was deliberately CUT, and which phase it belongs to (the passes are now phase-tagged in SPEC.md §0).
7. Parallel agents must never share an output file — nor a WORKING TREE. Concurrent writers thrash and lose everything (this cost a full codex pass; see docs/background/HIGH-WATER-LESSONS.md scar #12).