Concepts
Seriousness tiers
The four seriousness tiers — how Apothem scales governance to engagement level.
Apothem scales governance overhead to the engagement level. A quick exploration does not need signed commits; a production launch does.
The four tiers
| Tier | When to use | Governance floor |
|---|---|---|
| EXPLORING | Prototypes, throwaway experiments | Lint + tests + the core mandates (critical evaluation, best-solution reasoning, direct honesty) |
| PERSONAL_USE | Personal tools, local scripts | + Type-check + per-phase commits + PROGRESS.md |
| SHARED | Team projects, open-source | + failing checks block execution + per-task commits + full docs + parallel review |
| PUBLIC_LAUNCH | Production services, published packages | + Security scans + signed commits + semver + mandatory re-review |
Ad-hoc default
When no seriousness tier is specified, Apothem defaults to PERSONAL_USE.
Minimum viable governance
At EXPLORING, three cross-cutting mandates always apply regardless of tier:
- CM-1 (Critical Evaluation)
- CM-5 (Best Solution)
- CM-10 (Brutal Honesty)
Tier escalation
The seriousness tier can be escalated mid-project. When a PERSONAL_USE project graduates to SHARED, run the full local release-readiness sweep to catch any governance gaps that accumulated at the lower tier.