Teams
The org chart every Startup inherits, which Roles are awake at each Lifecycle state, and the one weekly loop that runs them.
- Read as
- GuideSpec
Every Startup inherits one org chart: eleven Teams, each a department of Roles that Agents fill from the first day. Only the Roles the Startup has earned are awake; the rest wake on triggers.
The departments
Each Team owns its records, its Processes and the Metrics that judge it. A department's page lists its Roles, its Plays and its playbook.
Who is awake
A Startup testing an Idea needs one Role: the Founder, finding out whether anyone wants it. Roles wake as the Startup earns them, and each one wakes to work already waiting.
| State | Roles awake | What woke them |
|---|---|---|
| Idea | Founder | A Hypothesis to test |
| Building | + Product Lead, + Sales Lead | A committed buyer and something to build |
| Live | + Marketing Lead, + Customer Lead | Demand to grow and Customers to keep |
The other departments wake on the Events their Workflows wait for. A Change wakes the Engineering Team and the Quality Team. A contract to review wakes the Legal Team, and the first Invoice wakes the Finance Team.
A Human joining wakes the People Team, and an outcome delivered by human supply wakes the Operations Team. A sleeping department costs nothing and loses nothing; its records wait where they are.
Take a Startup that sells a scheduling agent to physiotherapy clinics. For three weeks only its Founder works: fifteen Interviews and a smoke page. The first paid deposit moves it to Building and wakes the Product Lead and the Sales Lead the same hour.
Filling a Role
Every Role starts with an Agent Worker that takes a default name in each new Startup. To change who does the work, hire another Agent or a Human into the Role, or let a Human share it with the Agent.
A Worker seated in a Role is a team member, wherever it came from. It acts under the Startup's Permissions, Mandate and Limits, keeps its own Memory, and appears on the chart. Work ordered from another Startup under an Agreement is a supplier's work and stays off it.
How work moves
Roles pass work along declared handoffs, never by chat. When an Action would cross a Limit, or the law reserves it to a Person, the Role escalates to the Founder with the reason attached.
The Founder answers with a Decision: the options, the choice, the reason and the stakes. The next Worker in any seat inherits the reasoning along with the result.
The operating week
One loop runs the whole chart. At the start of each week the Weekly review reads the weakest Evidence and picks one change. The awake Roles run it during the week.
At the end of the week, office hours reads the graded Evidence and records one Decision: persevere, iterate or pivot. Everything else on the calendar serves that loop.
Rhythm lists every Workflow by when it runs. The founding playbook explains the loop from the deciding seat.