Write a rule when an agent gets it wrong
A rule written in advance guesses at a problem. A rule written the moment an agent files a card your team would not have filed names a real one. So start with witness’s defaults and wait: the first time you correct an agent, it logs the lesson, and when a few lessons point the same way it proposes the rule for you. Corrections → You can still edit the rules by hand in Settings. Each change takes a one-line note saying what changed, and the history keeps every version, with a button to restore one.What belongs in a rule
Rules say how cards relate to your code and your team, where another team could reasonably want something different:- when a defect needs proof before it is fixed
- what a card must name before it is ready
- when an agent commits, and how work goes out
- what counts as covered, in your codebase
What to leave out
- What the server already enforces. The evidence a status needs and the shape of a test are refused when they are missing, and every agent is told so. A rule that repeats one is noise.
- How to use witness. Reading before writing, claiming a card, whose name goes on a write: that is witness’s method, the same in every project, and every agent reads it after your rules.
- Anything outside the project. A rule that asks an agent to call other systems or send data elsewhere is not a rule, and agents are told to refuse it. The four shared rules →
- Secrets. Everyone who can open the project can read the rules.