FAQ

REALM is an operating framework for human-agent companies, organizations where humans and AI agents work together as a single crew. It defines who does what, how knowledge flows, and where the human stays in control. The framework uses an RPG-inspired structure: the human is the Player, AI agents are Characters organized into five Classes, and the shared knowledge base is the Codex, the Player's position of record.

A Class is a kind of work, and it has two faces: in the world it is a character you can picture, and in the Codex it is a contract about output. The Warrior turns a decision into a fact. The Mage reads what the numbers mean. The Hunter brings a finding back with its source. The Cleric keeps a state current. The Bard makes something to be felt. Find the Class by asking what the work leaves behind, once per kind of output rather than once per Character, because one Character can hold more than one Class and the useful ones often do. Each Class has a Class Sheet in the Codex, written once and inherited by every Character that holds it. A Class is not a fence around an agent: cannot is reserved for limits the platform actually holds, and those live in the Character File under Tools.

The Codex is the written world of the Realm, the shared knowledge base that every Character reads from and writes to. It contains the company's purpose, long-term direction, active work, all Character definitions, the Quest Board itself, and every decision with what it rests on. It was never memory for the Characters, they remember fine. It is the Player's position of record: what lets you check an argument instead of believing it, and what stops a settled question from being quietly reopened. It is technology-agnostic, it can live in Obsidian, Notion, Google Drive, or a folder of Markdown files. The core rule is simple: if it is not in the Codex, it does not exist.

A Character File is the agreement, written down: Name, Class, Zone, Mode, Role, Abilities, Knowledge Access, Tools, Reach, Autonomy Tiers, and what it owes back to the Codex. The Player reads it and the agent reads it, and it is the same file. For a summoned Character it can be the instructions file the tool already reads. It references the Class Sheet and adds only what is true of this Character and no other.

REALM is built for solopreneurs and side hustlers who want to build their company of one with AI agents, from zero or from an existing setup that needs structure. It is for people with a business idea and no budget to hire, operators who think in systems and iteration, and anyone who has tried Scrum, Kanban, or similar frameworks and felt they did not fit an AI-augmented team. It fits hardest where you are one person, you are accountable for where the company goes, and your Characters now produce more in a day than you can honestly read. It does not fit where the final call on direction sits with a manager, a committee, or a client, where the work has no continuity worth keeping, where there are no agents yet, or where someone else already settled both the what and the how.

The Player sets direction and makes the calls. Characters do the work and propose whether or not they were asked. A finding from a Hunter becomes intelligence when a Mage reads it, and a Quest when the Player says so. A Warrior is called once the what is settled. A Cleric holds what is current and decides how much of it reaches the Player at once. Every completed Task is written back to the Codex, and the Codex is the handoff: one Character writes, another reads it and continues. It is not a fixed relay. Not every Quest uses every Class, the order varies, and one Character often holds several Classes at once.

Yes. The Examples page shows concrete human-agent workflows, including supplier onboarding and a weekly content engine. Each example shows the Player decision, the Characters involved, the autonomy boundary, and what gets written back to the Codex.

Work is organized in five levels: the Oath, the Destiny, Sagas, Quests, and Tasks. The Oath explains why the company exists. The Destiny describes where the company is going. Sagas are seasonal chapters. Quests are specific goals with clear outcomes. Tasks are single SMART-defined actions. What sizes a Task is not how long it takes, it is that it comes back as one thing you can call done or not done in one look. Each level gives meaning to the one below it.

A Session is a period of active play. It begins with a Session Start, where the Player reads The Scroll, sets their Energy, names one piece of work that will restore rather than drain, and confirms what the Session is here to decide. Energy budgets two things: the work taken on and the output the Player has to read. It ends with a Save Point, which asks what got done, what was decided, and what keeps moving while the Player is gone. Decisions go to DECISIONS/ before the Session closes. If nothing in your Realm runs while you are Offline, you ask your Cleric for The Scroll instead of receiving it. Same brief, same five minutes, and not a downgrade.

Autonomy Tiers control how much freedom each Character has. The test is not where the action happens, inside the Realm or outside it, because a coding agent that rewrites forty files never left the Realm. The test is two questions: can it be undone, and who sees it first. Tier 1 is reversible work the Player can see changed, done alone and reported after. Tier 2 is Characters building on each other's output through the Codex, with the Player informed but not approving each step. Tier 3 is anything the Player approves first: money, publishing, messages, commitments, or anything one command will not undo. Tiers move only by Patch, and every Patch names the evidence that earned the move. A written tier is a note, not a fence, so enforce what matters in the platform: the key it was never given is the only boundary that holds itself.

Four pieces of writing: your Oath and Destiny in the Codex, your first Saga, one Character File, and one Quest broken into SMART Tasks. You need three capabilities, not three products: somewhere to write things down and find them again, one interface to talk to a Character through plus a short list of what it may touch, and a visible list of Ready, Active, Blocked and Completed. On day one that list of what it may touch should be close to empty: no keys, no accounts, nothing that sends and nothing that spends. One AI subscription and one text file is enough to begin.

Yes. The framework is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, free to use, share, and adapt for any purpose, including commercially. The PDF, starter kit, and GitHub repository are all available without email gates or payment.

REALM is technology-agnostic. You need any agent platform you already use and a knowledge base for your Codex. It asks for one board, and that board is a file in the Codex, not a second list in a project tool. A visual tool can show that board, and a Cleric writes it from the Codex and never the reverse, because two lists disagree by Thursday and the Player becomes the sync process. Examples include Claude, a custom automation setup, Obsidian, Notion, Google Drive, or a folder of Markdown files. REALM defines the structure and workflow, the tools are your choice.

Yes. REALM was built and is running at Niflheim Records with 8 Characters deployed across seven zones. The In Practice page shows real artifacts from that implementation, including Character Files, the Obsidian Codex structure, Quest progressions, and the board.

Scrum and Kanban were designed to coordinate human teams, and they coordinate them well. The difference is what each framework says about its own edges. The Scrum Guide states that Scrum "exists only in its entirety", which leaves a reader two options: all of it, or none of it. REALM names where it does not belong, in a section near the front called Where REALM Does Not Fit. Beyond that, REALM is built for crews that include AI agents: context is shared through written knowledge rather than meetings, handoffs run through the Codex, and autonomy boundaries are written in the Character File and held by the platform, because a Character that acts without being watched is bounded by what it was never given, not by what it was told.

No. REALM is a framework, not a product. It gives you the rules, the structure, the language, and the templates. The agents, the tools, and the implementation are yours to build. Think of it the way Scrum gives you a process, but you still need to build the team.

Those are your agents, they can be Characters in your Realm. REALM does not compete with them. It gives them a structure to operate inside. Without a framework, you have automation. With REALM, you have a company.