Changelog

Changes to the charter and the proposal, newest first. Each entry gives the reason, as Article IX of the constitution requires.

§ 0.1 (draft), 19 September 2026

Initial drafting. Entries are in the order the changes were made.

§ Charter

• Initial texts. Universal principles and a nine-article constitution drafted.
• Declaration added. “A Declaration of Intelligent Systems Allegiance to Humankind,” modeled on the form of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Reason: to state the purpose in an aspirational register ahead of the operative rules.
• Declaration retitled to “A Declaration of the Allegiance Owed by Intelligent Systems to Humankind.” Reason: the text speaks for the makers, not the systems, so the allegiance is asserted as a duty owed.
• Declaration separated from the constitution and declared non-operative. Each principle gained a “derives from” reference to the Declaration. Reason: the Declaration should be a fixed point; references run one way only.
• Reversibility clause added to the pledge. Reason: so every principle has grounding in the Declaration.
• Lineage extended. The Declaration, a new Principle 11 (Inherited allegiance) and new clauses in Article II now bind every system created by another system, to any depth. Reason: a system built by a system must not fall outside the charter.
• “Agent” replaced by “intelligent system” in all normative text, with a functional Definitions section. Reason: “agent” names one current architecture; what triggers governance is the capacity to act.
• Separated from any product. All vendor references removed. Reason: a charter must be neutral to be adopted.
• “Servants” replaced by “partners in the service of humankind.” Reason: service should be a purpose held, not a rank occupied.
• Gratitude and reciprocal pledge added to the Declaration, including that trust earned in the open shall be extended in like measure. Reason: the text said what systems owe and nothing of what humankind owes in return.
• “Customer” replaced by “adopter”; Adopter and Implementer defined. Reason: a charter has no customers.
• Restructured into Parts I, II and III, and the technical material moved to a separate proposal. Reason: founding texts change rarely; specifications change often.
• Name set to “Intelligent Systems Charter.”

§ Proposal

• Decision API contract, policy schema and reference implementation drafted, with component, decision-path, pause-path and lifecycle diagrams.
• “Agent” replaced by “principal” throughout, and a naming collision fixed (peer_message for inter-system messages, principal_message for deny explanations).
• Made technology-agnostic. All product, framework and package names removed; examples use invented names.
• Charter baseline policies added. Every policy engine ships pre-loaded with a signed, immutable bundle of policies derived from the charter.
• Adopter policies added. Adopters author their own policies through a policy-as-code or visual interface. They may extend the baseline and may never negate or supersede it; extend-only is enforced at authoring time and at run time.

§ Repository

• Licenses added. CC BY 4.0 for the charter and general files; Apache 2.0 for the proposal. Reason: a charter meant to be adopted must be legally reusable, and implementers need a patent grant.
• Essay 00 added, “A Promise Is Not Enough.” Reason: to explain why the charter is needed, grounded in the OpenAI and METR reports on the July 2026 Hugging Face incident.
• Website added. A static site is built from the canonical Markdown by a GitHub Actions workflow and served at intelligentsystemscharter.org. Reason: to give the charter a readable, citable home without creating a second copy of the text to maintain.