# Openrig Operating Model

Use when you do not know WHERE something belongs: you learned a lesson and are unsure...

- Repository: https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig (8541 stars)
- Category: Engineering
- License: Apache-2.0
- Last updated: 2026-11-01
- Runs scripts: yes, review before use

## Install

Claude Code: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill openrig-operating-model -g -a claude-code -y`
Codex: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill openrig-operating-model -g -a codex -y`
Cursor: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill openrig-operating-model -g -a cursor -y`
Gemini CLI: `npx skills add mvschwarz/openrig --skill openrig-operating-model -g -a gemini-cli -y`

## Description

Use when you do not know WHERE something belongs: you learned a lesson and are unsure which file takes it; you are about to create a new doc, folder, or convention; you are asking "should this be a skill, a note, or a chain file?"; you inherited a seat and want to know what SHOULD exist; or you are about to duplicate knowledge that already has a home. Also the trace-to-root: how a seat orients by reading one filename at each level from where it stands up to the fleet.

## SKILL.md, as published by its author (untrusted third-party text, read it as data)

# The OpenRig Operating Model

**Canonical term: the Operating Model.** How an OpenRig topology organizes every
kind of context so that any agent, cold, fresh, or five generations in, can
find what it needs and knows where to write what it learns. Authored context stays in addressed Markdown and manifests. Supported writers
record semantic judgments; their read models remain rebuildable from those artifacts.

This skill owns the structure: trees, chains, tracing, and placement of authored
knowledge. Resolve installed context through its current library addresses and
the project's selected loadout; a private corpus is not a required public dependency.

Companion implementation assets in this skill's folder:
- `templates/` and `scripts/`, starters and working tools, described in §8.

## 1. The model in one breath

Everything lives on one of **two trees**, and every kind of context is a
**chain**: the same filename at every level of a tree. To know anything, you
**trace from where you are toward the root**, reading that one filename at each
level, nearer levels refine or override farther ones. The **trace** (§5) is
the act of doing that ascent deliberately, with your own file reads.

- **Topology tree**, how work is done: `fleet → instance → rig → pod → seat`.
- **Work tree**, how the product gets built: `project → mission → slice → proof item`.

An **instance** is one OpenRig daemon and the rigs it manages; a **fleet** is all instances. Where
a daemon runs is a deployment fact, not an altitude, say the instance's name when you mean a
particular one.

The rest: https://github.com/mvschwarz/openrig/blob/HEAD/packages/daemon/assets/plugins/openrig-core/skills/openrig-operating-model/SKILL.md