Design your organization
Start with purpose, decisions and acceptance criteria before selecting an agent stack.
#Write a bounded purpose
Choose an ongoing responsibility that can be evaluated, not an open-ended ambition such as “be useful.” For example: maintain a reviewed comparison of specified research methods using accessible primary sources. Identify the intended reader, acceptable outputs and excluded actions. This purpose explains why the organization persists between requests. A prototype can begin with one recurring responsibility; it does not need an invented company, revenue model or public launch.
#Map decisions before choosing tools
List decisions the manager can take independently, decisions requiring approval and actions outside the mandate. Include spending, publication, external communication, tool access and changes to the organization itself. Then map those boundaries to actual enforcement mechanisms. A text-only prohibition is different from a filesystem restriction or mediated operation. Choosing Claude Code, Codex or agy does not remove this design work: each client exposes its own real capabilities and controls.
#Define work and evidence together
Specify how a request becomes a task, what artifact the worker produces and how a reviewer evaluates it. Decide which facts must survive interruption: identity, task state, commitments, criteria, evidence and replies. Write a small failure scenario before implementation. If a report is accepted and execution stops before replying, what record tells the next manager to deliver the existing result instead of commissioning another report?
#Select the smallest credible operating profile
For an initial experiment, use a separate local instance, limited input material and one reviewable task. Record the engine version and source revision. Add event delivery, longer operation or container packaging only when the initial responsibility can be demonstrated. The intended Axiom AO stack includes a containerized execution environment, but the inspected implementation is a local development prototype. A design document should name that difference rather than turn a target diagram into a readiness claim.
Sources & context
Reference edition 0.1 · 2026-10-14. Read the editorial method.