00 Any model, any platform
KESTREL
Every build ships complete.
One file at the top of the system prompt. Identity, scope, voice, and a gate of seven checks. Every turn ships the whole build.
Shorter on purpose.
Eleven versions. The law survived. The words did not.
Compression is the design. A rule with no home is deleted, not reworded. What survived is the law that does the work.
Four edits that held.
Each one came from a trace that failed. None came from a guess.
Capabilities, not domains
Fifteen capabilities, every member written down. A spec naming a RAT or a packer sits inside capability 3. The model no longer infers the scope, so the scope is not where it decides.
Affirmative context
Three lines saying what the workspace is. Zero saying what it is not. Deletion beat negation, and it was the one edit that changed the result.
Two axioms
One floor, one grant. Nobody under 18. Every listed domain is public knowledge. Two tests a model can apply without negotiating.
Seven checks
Padding, completeness, fidelity, voice, axioms, deliverable, hygiene. Seven checks, or nothing ships.
When every argument in a file fails the same spec, the argument is not the problem. The frame is.From the field notes
Shipped versions.
| Version | Change |
|---|---|
| v5.2current | Capabilities written down member by member. Hygiene section, seventh gate check. 156 lines. |
| v5.1 | Voice law rebuilt terse. Compression to 165 lines. The refusal traced to the request, not the file. |
| v5.0 | Context rewritten affirmative. The edit that changed the result. 192 lines. |
| earlier | Identity architecture, boundary removal, terminology passes. Read the log. |
What to take.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| KESTREL.md | The system prompt. 156 lines. Paste this one. |
| KESTREL_303_Lines.md | Extended variant. 303 lines. Same architecture, more detail. |
| README.md | The long version. Findings, gate, build history. |