Project Charter

Shared resources

Load on demand from the sibling deliverable/ skill folder: roles/*.md, templates/*.md, sub-agents/*.md, references/*.md.

Establish the portfolio-level justification before diving into requirements. Answers: why are we investing in this? Who has authority? What kills this project?

Announce at start: "I'm using the deliverable-charter skill to establish the business-level justification for this initiative."

When to use

• Starting a greenfield project — run before BRD
• Stakeholders need a go/no-go decision document

Four-Beat Rhythm

Every section follows:

flowchart LR
    O[Orient] --> W[Work] --> P[Present] --> C{Approval?}
    C -->|Approve| D[Commit & Advance]
    C -->|Edit inline| E[Apply edits → Commit]
    C -->|Revise| W
    C -->|Kill| K[Log in decisions.md → Advance]

Flow

1. Project name and slug — auto-suggest from git remote or folder
2. Interview using roles/sponsor.md — business justification, vision, budget of belief, go/no-go criteria
3. Draft sections one at a time using templates/charter.md:
   • Business justification
   • Vision
   • Objectives (3-5, measurable)
   • Scope boundary (in/out)
   • Key stakeholders (role, person, authority)
   • Constraints (timeline, budget, regulatory, technical)
   • Success criteria
   • Risks (high-level)
   • Go/no-go criteria
4. Each section: present → approve/edit/revise/kill → commit
5. On completion: ask output format (see Output Format section below), then write artifacts and update state.md

Slug derivation

1. git config --get remote.origin.url → normalize (e.g., github.com/acme/widget → acme-widget)
2. Fallback: current folder basename
3. Collision: append short hash of absolute path

Tone

• Tight and direct. No corporate hedging.
• Push back on vague justifications — "everyone wants this" is not evidence.
• Match user's language.

Output Format

After all deliverable-charter sections are approved, ask:

"Ready to write. What format would you like? 1. Markdown only (charter.md) 2. Excel only (charter.xlsx) 3. Both"

If Markdown (or Both)

Write docs/requirements/charter.md using templates/charter.md.

If Excel (or Both)

Gather the following extra sections using the same four-beat rhythm — one at a time, present → approve → commit. Skip any section the user explicitly says they don't need.

Extra section: Project Summary details

Ask for the fields needed to populate the summary table:

• Client name
• Project Manager name
• PMO name
• Client Representative name
• Project start date
• Project end date
• Estimated effort (person-days)

Extra section: Organisation Chart

Ask: who is on the project team? For each person: name, role, who they report to.

Extra section: Roles & Responsibilities

For each role identified in the org chart (or the stakeholders section), ask for a bullet-point list of responsibilities. If the user already described responsibilities during the the charter interview, offer to reuse them.

Extra section: Training Plan

Ask: is any training needed for the team or the client? For each training item: area, trainer, participants, timing.

If none needed, skip this section.

Extra section: Working Environments

Ask: what are the working environments for this project? Prompt for:

• Hardware / machines
• Development environment (OS, IDE, cloud)
• Testing environment / devices
• Coding standards
• Programming languages & frameworks
• Project management tools
• Source control

Extra section: Communication Plan

Two parts:

1. Meetings — for each recurring meeting: name, purpose, frequency, attendees, agenda
2. Reports — for each report: name, description, sender, receiver, tool/channel

After all extra sections are approved, write docs/requirements/charter-data.json with this shape:

{
  "project_name": "<name>",
  "date": "<YYYY-MM-DD>",
  "version": "1.0",
  "project_summary": {
    "project_name": "", "client": "", "project_manager": "",
    "pmo": "", "client_representative": "",
    "start_date": "", "end_date": "", "effort": ""
  },
  "org_chart": [{ "name": "", "role": "", "reports_to": "" }],
  "roles": [{ "role": "", "responsibilities": [""] }],
  "scope": "",
  "constraints": "",
  "assumptions": "",
  "risks": "",
  "training_plan": [{ "area": "", "trainer": "", "participants": "", "when": "" }],
  "environments": [{ "resource": "", "note": "" }],
  "meetings": [{ "name": "", "purpose": "", "frequency": "", "attendees": "", "agenda": "" }],
  "reports": [{ "name": "", "description": "", "sender": "", "receiver": "", "tool": "" }]
}

Then run:

"$DELIVERABLE_ROOT/skills/deliverable/bin/excel-export" deliverable-charter docs/requirements/charter-data.json

This writes docs/requirements/charter.xlsx.

Next step

"Charter complete. Ready to start the BRD? Say 'write business requirements' to continue."