Palace Structure

Every generated palace has two top-level directories:

my-palace/
├── the-vestibule/          ← global config — the threshold before the palace
│   ├── README.md           ← entry point; read this first
│   ├── Characters/         ← one file per character/agent
│   ├── Rooms/              ← room descriptions and atmosphere
│   ├── Principles/
│   │   └── master_prompt.md  ← DM instructions for LLM sessions
│   └── Journal/            ← Hugo site for rendering session notes
└── the-mansion/            ← nine rooms, prefixed by function
    ├── communicating_*/
    ├── synthesizing_*/
    ├── iterating_*/
    ├── releasing_*/
    ├── deliberating_*/
    ├── researching_*/
    ├── brainstorming_*/
    ├── pitching_*/
    └── planning_*/

The Nine Rooms

Two parallel prefix systems make the palace self-documenting across any skin:

Room prefixes — gerund labels that name the activity, not the place. The room does what its prefix says regardless of whether it’s called “The Basement Office” or “The Garage.” Prefixes are derived from the Kabbalistic Tree of Life: each room corresponds to one of the nine lower Sefirot, with the estate itself as Malkuth.

Prefix	Clue Room	Sefirah	Function
`communicating_`	Hall	Tiferet	Inboxes, routing, the hub where all paths meet
`synthesizing_`	Study	Binah	Original writing, theory, deep focus work
`iterating_`	Kitchen	Hod	Infrastructure, DevOps, builds — where things get cooked
`releasing_`	Conservatory	Yesod	Airlock — release notes, changelogs, almost-prod docs
`deliberating_`	Lounge	Gevurah	Retros, grooming, blameless retrospection
`researching_`	Library	Chokhmah	External sources, references, links, the flash of outside insight
`brainstorming_`	Billiard Room	Keter	Private ideation, unformed will, not ready to surface
`pitching_`	Ballroom	Netzach	BizDev, investor decks, external relations — the grandest room
`planning_`	Dining Room	Chesed	Specs, PRDs, sprint charters — expanding the plan before Gevurah cuts

Each room has a README.md with YAML frontmatter describing its purpose and atmosphere within the current skin.

Characters

Characters are named by the character — no role prefix. The character’s file, personality card, and role description speak for themselves.

Skin	Example character files
clue	`miss_scarlett.md`, `col_mustard.md`, `dana_scully.md`
xfiles	`fox_mulder.md`, `dana_scully.md`, `cigarette_man.md`
muppets	`kermit.md`, `miss_piggy.md`, `fozzie.md`

Each character file defines a role, personality, behavioral notes, and voice samples that an LLM can pick up and speak through. The role is described in the file — it doesn’t need to be encoded in the filename.

the-vestibule

the-vestibule is the threshold — the global configuration layer that sits outside the nine rooms and governs the palace as a whole.

Characters/ — One markdown file per character the LLM can inhabit. Each file defines the character’s role, personality, knowledge domain, and speaking style.

Rooms/ — Atmospheric descriptions of each room. Consulted when an agent “enters” a room to set tone and scope.

Principles/master_prompt.md — The DM instructions. Loaded at the start of each session to orient the LLM to the palace, the active skin, the characters, and the session conventions.

Journal/ — A Hugo site for rendering all palace session notes as a navigable, tagged web journal. Multi-taxonomy: rooms, characters, phases, session types. Runs locally with hugo server.

YAML Frontmatter Protocol

Every significant file in a palace uses YAML frontmatter for metadata. The conventions are:

---
title: "Session Title"
date: 2026-04-20
palace_room: synthesizing_study
character: moulder
phase: active
skin: xfiles
session_type: synthesis
tags: [openloci, docs, palace]
summary: "One-sentence summary of what happened."
---

The session_type, phase, and skin vocabularies are defined in the-vestibule/Principles/taxonomy.yaml within each palace instance.

Communicating Room Conventions

The communicating_*/ room (Hall) follows a shared inbox convention:

communicating_hall/
├── README.md
├── inbox_{character}/     ← per-character inboxes
│   └── handoff_{from}_{date}.md
└── routing/               ← triage and dispatch notes

Handoff files are the primary mechanism for passing context between sessions and between agents.