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The Shapes: repos that teach any agent how to work in them

The problem. I kept setting up repositories the same way, to give AI agents a library of context that followed me and the project, no matter which agent I pointed at it or which machine I was working from. It needed a name, so I coined one: shapes.

What I built. Repeatable shapes for a repository, an organization and a household. There are several, for different purposes, and decisions keep falling out of them as reusable patterns. Every shape carries one protocol: roles, notes and a log, handoffs, tools and safety. An agent can seed a new repo from a shape, adopt an existing one, check it or retire it.

What happened. I can populate the first scaffolding for a new repo or organization rapidly and by script, so first prompts are that much more meaningful. Each repo built from a shape records the commit it came from, so new behavior I add in one central place reaches every shaped repo and org, and they all get better agent behavior.

What I learned. Consistency is what lets agents pick up where the last one left off. And I just want to share it.