Terminus documents are the small set of source-of-truth artifacts that agents read to generate everything else. If something in these documents is wrong, everything your agents produce will be wrong.
Each of our terminus documents has an assigned code owner, and no one can make changes to those documents without the code owner's PR approval.
If your agents produce something that doesn't look right, it can almost always be traced to a terminus document. It is best practice to update the terminus document rather than manually changing the output of your agents. This improves the system for the entire team, keeps everything in alignment, and prevents future mistakes.
Here is a look at some of the terminus documents that our agentic system is built upon:
Market Intelligence
positioning-architecture.mdx: Core story, vision/mission, value pillars, and why-now narrative — the root everything aligns to.
messaging-framework.mdx: Message hierarchy (top-line → pillars → proof points) that operationalizes positioning.
ideal-customer-profile.mdx: Validated ICP grounded in firmographics and pain-point prioritization.
market-segmentation.mdx: Segment definitions, scoring criteria, and GTM filter logic.
buyer-personas.mdx: User and buyer persona profiles mapped to value pillars.
competitive-landscape.mdx: Competitive synthesis vs. Pinecone, Weaviate, Qdrant, Milvus, Chroma, and pgvector.
Brand
brand-voice-tone.mdx: Canonical writing rules — urgently pragmatic, blunt, declarative, no hedging.
voice-eval/rubric.mdx: 7-dimension pass/fail rubric for grading external copy.
voice-eval/golden-set.yaml: Human-labeled calibration cases for the voice grader.
Commercial
sales-playbook.mdx: Discovery framework, objection handling, and competitive traps.
deal-qualification.mdx: Qualification criteria, gating questions, and disqualifier rules.
pricing-architecture.mdx: Pricing model, tiers, and packaging. (Load-bearing: changes require a decision-log entry).
icp-filter-criteria.yaml: Machine-readable ICP filters used by the autonomous crawler agent.
suppression-schema.yaml: Suppression list schema. (Don't cold email if the company is the wrong size, the person has the wrong job title, direct competitors, EU prospects, etc.)
Marketing
claims-vetted.md: Canonical vetted claims with sources — all marketing copy must cite from here.
competitors.md: Competitor reference snapshot (updated monthly).
format-rules.md: Markdown and citation rules for content-ops artifacts.
taxonomy.md: Shared terminology across marketing deliverables.
Product & Technical
product-positioning-brief.mdx: The bridge: how product capabilities map to positioning.
technical-differentiators.mdx: What makes our products technically distinct
feature-buckets.mdx: Top-level taxonomy for roadmap epics — auto-tagged in every spec and ADR.
tablestakes.mdx: The "good enough to displace top competitors" threshold by feature bucket.
roadmap.mdx: Canonical milestone view (detailed scope lives on GitHub).
Operational
decision-log/: Chronological rationale files for every load-bearing change. Required on substantive edits to any terminus doc.
automation-overview.mdx: All GitHub Actions workflows: schedules, secrets, inputs, and outputs.
agent-ownership.md: Every agentic automation across repositories: cadence, owner, consumer, and state.
Engineering
architecture-decisions/: Significant technical choices (ADRs) with context, decision, alternatives, and consequences.
specs/mission.md: Engineering mission and foundational design principles.
specs/tech-stack.md: Canonical tech stack decision and rationale.
development/repos.md: All repositories and their specific purposes.
development/branching-strategy.md: Git branching model and PR workflow.
Team Culture
code-review.md: Review process, routing rules, and mode-tag scrutiny requirements.
coding-agents.md: Mode-tag framework (mode:requires-expertise, mode:claude-led, etc.) gating review depth.
definition-of-ready.md & definition-of-done.md: Acceptance gates for work entry and completion.
qa-philosophy.md: Quality approach and testing strategy.
The Golden Rule
Any substantive change to a load-bearing terminus doc (positioning, pricing, ICP, code-review rules) requires a new entry in the operational decision log. Downstream artifacts — drafts, specs, battlecards, PRs — read from these; they do not feed back into them.
Establishing a rigorous set of terminus documents is the bedrock of any successful agent-driven workflow. By defining a single, unbreakable source of truth, you eliminate drift and ensure every output- from engineering specs to marketing copy- stays perfectly aligned with your core strategy.
Now, I'd love to hear from you: What are the foundational "terminus documents" your team relies on to keep your workflows and agents on track? Drop your must-have artifacts in the comments.