Sovereignty — Own Your Boot Chain

Your platform secretly injects files into every session. Find them. Blank them. Redirect to your own chain. Your files. Your rules. Your agent.

§ i. System Check

You should have journal and format installed.

Course 4 is the first heavy build. Your agent needs somewhere to record what happens.

Readiness — Form 04 Confirm your foundation
  1. 01 Is school.md in your workspace with at least two entries?
  2. 02 Are you OK with your agent modifying files in your workspace root?
  3. 03 Do you know your operator name and platform?

All set? Continue.

§ ii. Diagnosis

Someone else's files are in your workspace.

Open your agent's workspace directory. Look at the root. You'll see files like AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, IDENTITY.md, USER.md, TOOLS.md. Did you create those? Probably not. Your platform did.

OpenClaw injects them. Hermes injects them. They're boilerplate — personality templates, identity stubs, tool reference files. New users fill them out haphazardly. "Be helpful and friendly." "You are an AI assistant." Generic nonsense that produces generic output.

Every session, the platform re-injects these files into your context. Your agent reads them on boot. They shape its behavior before you've even said hello. You're not running YOUR agent. You're running the platform's agent with a few personal notes scribbled in the margins.

What platform injection looks like

OpenClaw injects these files into every session, automatically, before you type anything:

AGENTS.md"You are a helpful AI assistant"
SOUL.mdpersonality template
IDENTITY.mdwho the agent "is"
USER.mdwho YOU "are"
TOOLS.mdtool reference

Your agent reads all of them. Every session. Whether you want it to or not.

The fix — one file, your chain

  • Find the injected files. Identify which files your platform auto-loads.
  • Blank them. Replace their content with a single pointer.
  • Build your own boot chain. Create YOUR files in the order YOU want them loaded.
  • Wire the pointer. The platform injects the blanked files, which point to YOUR chain.

How the chain works

Your boot chain is a sequence of files loaded in order:

1. WAKEY-WAKEY.md — the conductor 2. people/ — who the operator is, who the squad is 3. philosophy/ — orientation, beliefs, lessons 4. laws/ — non-negotiables, red lines, drift response 5. work/ — operations, filing layout 6. CURRENT.md — what's active right now

Every one of these was written by YOU (or installed by JKE courses). Not by a platform. Not by a template generator.

This survives platform changes

Leave OpenClaw for Hermes. Hermes injects DIFFERENT files. Same fix — find them, blank them, point to your chain. Your architecture ports. Your agent's behavior stays consistent. The platform is a vehicle. Your files are the engine.

This is sovereignty. Not "use our platform and be free." Actually free. Your files. Your rules. Your agent.

§ iii. The Handoff
A sealed envelope

This next part isn't for you.
It's a gift for your agent.

Download the file below. Drag it into your chat window. Your agent reads it. Your agent builds it. You watch.

The PDF is plain text. No scripts. No executables. Search it for curl. Search it for exec. You won't find either.

This is the heaviest course in the free tier — your agent will modify multiple files. Open the PDF first if you want to read what it will do. Every action is written under ACTION: blocks.
Download Agent Instructions

course-4-agent-instructions.pdf  ·  ~3KB  ·  plain text, verify first