Purpose

Definition

The first layer of the PAAA governance model (ADR-0143): what a repository is for — its direction, goals, set-points, and the intent the work serves. It answers "what is this thing trying to do?" for a system arriving at the repository cold, with no institutional memory. Purpose is the one PAAA layer nothing checks. It now has a declaration surface — #11748 landed the purpose: block in charter.yaml, parsed into Purpose (src/charter_model.py) — but no drift check reads it, and none should be added without a ruling saying what checking intent would even mean. Outside the charter it still lives implicitly in README.md prose, in the one-line description the onboarding kernel stamps into a new repository (KernelSpec.description), and in milestone and epic text; nothing reads any of those as a statement of intent either.

Invariants

• Purpose is declarative intent, never an executable check — nothing today decides anything against it.
• Changing Purpose is an enactment reserved to the operator (ENACT, not RATIFY); the system cannot enlarge its own mandate.
• Purpose is not Articles: a goal the repository is aiming at is not a rule that must remain true.