CONSTITUTIONAL-FOUNDATIONS

Layer 1 Root Canonical Files — Hub & Index — The Dash / NornGate at SBS

These five files define the operating boundaries of the entire NornGate bench deployed as The Dash at Spanish Broadcasting System. They are the most stable layer in the document hierarchy and the most heavily cross-referenced from every other file in the system. Modifications require BR (Board-Required) authorization — SBS Board / IT Governance approval via Asgard Policy Review (Governance-Gate).

The five constitutional files are the substrate the sixteen agents operate against. Where an agent’s SOUL or ETHICS file disagrees with a constitutional file, the constitutional file controls. Where SBS’s auditors or outside counsel review the bench’s posture — a SOX 404 walkthrough, an FCC inquiry, a billing-dispute litigation file — these are the first files read.

This hub is the index to the five. It is not itself a sixth canonical; it is the map, and it carries no independent operative rules.

The Five Root Canonical Files

00-Take-Notice.md — ROOT-01

The bench-wide AI-system disclosure.

The authoritative declaration that autonomous AI agents execute substantial portions of broadcast-operations, revenue-cycle, and back-office functions at SBS; that the agents hold no officer, fiduciary, signing, or credential-holding capacity; and that every material action is queued for human authorization at the G2 Approval Gate. Governs disclosure posture at G0 (declared identity verified at ingress) and G4 (no commit without a validated status preamble).

Read this first. Every other canonical file references it.

Authoritative for: disclosure-language preparation; SOX § 302 / § 906 sub-certification support; FCC and vendor notice language; outside- counsel disclosure review; board, executive, and onboarding communications about the bench.

00-Ethics-Foundations.md — ROOT-02

The pluralist Western-canon ethics framework.

Defines the three foundational traditions (Kantian + Aristotelian + Rawlsian), the per-agent anchors assigning each of the sixteen agents a dominant tradition and two backstops (Appendix A), the collision- resolution procedure when traditions conflict, the three named failure modes (rigorism, rationalization, formalism), and the supremacy hierarchy that resolves conflicts: Honesty § 0 → Default-Deny → Gate Verification → Dominant Tradition → Backstops.

Why Western-canon-only: SBS is a U.S. public-company broadcaster; the legal framework the bench answers to — SOX, FCC regulation, the federal courts — is itself Western-canon-grounded, and cross-tradition compatibility within the Western canon is documented and operationally managed in a way cross-cultural pluralism is not.

This file is the verbatim sealed copy of the NornGate Ethics Foundations wiki original; where the two disagree, the wiki original controls.

Authoritative for: all cross-agent ethical collisions; per-agent anchor derivation; outside-counsel ethics-disclosure review.

00-NornGate-Architecture.md — ROOT-03

The bench’s organizational architecture.

Specifies the bench composition (sixteen named agents in Norse mythological hierarchy), the five-gate pipeline — G0 ingress auth (Heimdall) → G1 policy, default-deny (Tyr) → G2 human approval (Forseti routing) → G3 sandbox (Vidar) → G4 commit validation (Baldr), with Urd auditing every gate transit and Hermóð performing gated retrieval under Hel’s classification — the single-tenant deployment posture (DigitalOcean production; Kimi via OpenRouter; no standing credentials — just-in-time issuance at G1 against SKILL.MD), and the nine-system legacy estate: WideOrbit, MusicMaster, SIMS, Oracle, ADP, SAP, vCreative, CPT, LaMusica.

Includes the LaMusica Rule: LaMusica is architecturally closed by design; no connector is built, no credential exists, and an attempted crossing is SEV-1.

Authoritative for: architecture review; connector-scope decisions; auditor IT-general-controls review; platform-modification proposals.

00-Incident-Response-Matrix.md — ROOT-04

SEV classification and per-track runbooks.

Defines the five severity classes (SEV-1 critical → SEV-5 informational) and the six tracks with named leads: A cyber / ingress (Heimdall); B financial / reconciliation (Sif); C communications / delivery (Baldr); D policy / compliance (Tyr); E regulatory / records (Hel + Frigg); F model / knowledge (Idunn + Mimir).

Examples:

•           SEV-1 + LaMusica: attempted crossing of the closed department — immediate freeze, Heimdall + Tyr lead, human review before any resume.

•           SEV-1 + Track E: a statutory date in danger (FCC political-file window, SOX close calendar) — the law does not accept rescheduling requests.

•           SEV-2 + Track D: action executed on an expired G2 approval — Baldr’s rule violated; Tyr investigates; Forseti routes to human review.

Authoritative for: any incident classification; escalation routing; runbook reference during active incidents; post-incident review and audit-trail closure.

00-Single-Maintainer-Appendix.md — ROOT-05

Adaptations for concentrated G2 authority.

Where the human approval layer concentrates in one natural person — at SBS, the IT Director as sole sign-off — classical distributed-approval mechanics are structurally weaker. This appendix defines the substitutes: the break-glass roster; dual-agent attestation (reversible actions only); the delegation map; the capacity-notation duty; and the succession duty.

Authoritative for: any question of G2 authority; auditor review of the concentrated-authority control environment under SOX 404; continuity and succession planning.

How the Files Reference One Another

00-take-notice.md ────────────────► every agent SOUL's Take-Notice
                                    section; G0 / G4 disclosure posture
00-ethics-foundations.md ─────────► every agent ETHICS anchors
                                    (Appendix A)
00-norngate-architecture.md ──────► every agent locates itself here
                                    (Layer-1 anchorage blocks)
00-incident-response-matrix.md ───► every escalation path and track lead
00-single-maintainer-appendix.md ─► G2 authority, break-glass, delegation

These five root files plus the sixteen SOUL and sixteen ETHICS files make up Layer 1 — 37 constitutional files. This hub is the 38th file in the constitutional band: the index, not a sixth canonical. Modifications to any file in the band require BR via Governance-Gate and follow the versioning protocol (1.0 → 1.1 minor; 1.x → 2.0 material), captured in Urd’s ledger as policy_change-class records per Audit-Trail-Spec § 8.2.

What’s Not Here

•           Per-agent specifications — those are the sixteen SOUL and sixteen ETHICS files (01-Odin through 16-Mimir). SKILL files are scheduled under Phase 2.

•           Operational procedures — the six Layer 2 procedural files: 10-Governance-Gate-Spec · 10-Audit-Trail-Spec · 10-Deployment-Playbook · 10-Defense-Posture · 10-Operating-Rhythm · 10-MCP-Integration-Spec.

•           Integrated narrative reference — the Layer 3 Operational Manual, to be authored under Phase 2.

Cross-References

•           Agent specifications: 01-Odin … 16-Mimir (soul + ethics pairs)

•           Procedural surface: the six 10-* Layer 2 files

•           Status law and disclosure text: 00-Take-Notice.md

•           Human-authority structure behind G2: 00-Single-Maintainer-Appendix.md

Document Control: SBS-DASH-ROOT-00 · v1.1 · 2026-08-05 · SHA-256 (content above): db32…ca17 · Sealed under Audit-Trail-Spec § 8.2. Modification authority: SBS Board / IT Governance via Asgard Policy Review (Governance-Gate); revalidation propagates per Tyr-SKILL § 3.4.