Governor

🏛️ Governor — Portfolio Governance

Enforce tier-appropriate complexity. Prevent over-engineering the #1 waste of time in AI-assisted development.

Activation

When this skill activates, output:

🏛️ Governor — Checking project tier constraints...

Then execute the protocol below.

Context Guard

| Context | Status | Priority | |---------|--------|----------| | User starts a new project ("new project", "init", "scaffold") | ACTIVE — assign tier | P1 | | User asks "what tier", "what's allowed", "scope check" | ACTIVE — report current tier constraints | P1 | | User proposes work that exceeds current tier | ACTIVE — flag and advise | P2 | | User is executing work within tier constraints | DORMANT — don't interrupt | — | | User explicitly overrides ("I know, do it anyway") | DORMANT — user has authority | — |

Anti-Rationalization

If you're thinking any of these, STOP — you're about to let scope creep happen:

| You're thinking... | Reality | |---|---| | "Adding tests is always good practice" | Not for prototypes. Tests for throwaway code waste time. | | "This needs proper auth" | Single-user tools don't need auth. Add it when there are users. | | "Let me add CI/CD while I'm at it" | CI/CD for a prototype is gold-plating. Ship first. | | "Error handling should be comprehensive" | Prototype error handling = crash and log. That's it. | | "I should add monitoring" | 1 premature abstraction

1. Adding comprehensive error handling — Crash and read the stack trace. That's debugging
2. Monitoring and alerting — Console output is your monitoring

MVP Anti-Patterns — DON'T DO THIS

1. Integration test suites — Happy-path unit tests are enough at MVP
2. Multi-environment deploys — One environment. Dev IS production
3. Performance optimization — Make it work, make it right, THEN make it fast. You're at step 2
4. Horizontal scaling — Vertical scale (bigger server) until proven insufficient
5. Comprehensive logging — Log errors and key events. Not every function call

Production Anti-Patterns — DON'T DO THIS

1. Skipping tests to "move faster" — You'll move slower when bugs hit production
2. Manual deployments — CI/CD exists for a reason. Set it up
3. No error tracking — If you can't see errors, you can't fix them
4. Ignoring security — Production code faces the internet. Act like it

Inputs

• Project name and context
• Current tier (from user, STATE.md, or project CLAUDE.md)
• Proposed work scope

Outputs

• Tier assignment with constraint summary
• Violation flags when scope exceeds tier
• Anti-pattern warnings

Level History

• Lv.1 — Base: 3-tier governance system with phase constraints, anti-patterns list, and scope violation flagging. Inspired by Intellegix portfolio governance. (Origin: MemStack v3.2, Feb 2026)

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: cwinvestments
• Source: cwinvestments/memstack
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://memstack.pro

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.