| type | Fleeting |
|---|---|
| timestamp | 2026-07-16T00:00:00Z |
| Item_ID | baseplate-readme |
| title | Baseplate — README |
| Date_Added | 2026-07-16 |
| Date_Modified | 2026-07-16 |
| Needs_Processing | false |
Baseplate turns the seven-layer founding-document canon into an enforced discipline: point an AI at this folder, describe a product, and it interviews you, selects exactly the documents that product earns, generates them to a verifiable standard, and blocks the ship until a stranger — a fresh model instance handed only the folder — can build from it.
"Read
AI-BOOTSTRAP.mdand help me design the founding-document stack for my product."
The AI will start by interviewing you, one question at a time. It will not start writing documents from a one-line brief — eliciting before generating is the whole point.
- An operating volume (OV) — a self-contained markdown corpus an AI loads to run a kind of work. Built on Operating-Volume-Engineering.
- One cartridge per product. A cartridge's terminal artifact is that product's founding-document stack — the only thing a builder needs.
- A set of gates: a selection protocol with recorded rationale, a consistency audit, and a stranger test. Plus a portfolio failure catalog that makes product #4's stack benefit from what shipping #1–3 taught you.
- Not a document-template pack. Templates are commodity scaffolding; the durable value is the gates and the accumulating failure catalog.
- Not a product builder. The stack is the terminal artifact; Baseplate does not build the product.
- Not opinionated about your product. The engine is subject-agnostic; the product is a parameter of the cartridge.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
AI-BOOTSTRAP.md |
AI entry point |
_baseplate-engine/ |
The canon + protocols: 00-START-HERE, 01-THE-CANON, 02-ELICITATION, 03-SELECTION, 04-GENERATION-STANDARDS, 05-GATES, BOOTSTRAP-NEW-STACK |
_types/ |
The eight structural document Types |
_portfolio/ |
The cross-cartridge failure catalog (Grows-Through-Use Zone) |
_meta/ |
Posture, traceability matrix, golden-session log |
<Product-Name>/ |
Your product cartridges |
The four OVE content zones plus Baseplate's Grows-Through-Use Zone are declared in CONTRIBUTING.md § Content zones.
- Any capable AI that reads markdown and parses YAML frontmatter (Claude, GPT-4-class+, Gemini 2.x+).
- No runtime dependencies. The OV form is plain markdown; a human and an AI run it with zero code execution.
Tooling posture. Baseplate ships no validator by design — the two gates (consistency audit, stranger test) are runnable by a human with a text editor and a second chat window, and the stranger test cannot be mechanized (it needs a fresh model instance). The manual walkthrough is _baseplate-engine/_meta/VALIDATION-CHECKLIST.md. Inherited from OVE's manual-first, no-runtime-dependency doctrine.
CC-BY 4.0. See LICENSE.md.
Built on Operating-Volume-Engineering by Jawn Lam — https://github.com/JawnLam/Operating-Volume-Engineering. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
See VERSION.md. This is v1.0.0-rc.2 — the release candidate (schema frozen; passes its own consistency audit). CHANGELOG.md is the authoritative release history. Promotion to v1.0.0 awaits a cross-family run + a real cartridge or two (see the changelog).