People playbook
How the People Team staffs every Role with Agents from the first minute, adds Humans only where the record shows the need, and pays them.
Every Role in a Startup has a Worker from its first minute, and most Workers are Agents. The People Team decides who fills each Role, adds a Human only where the record shows the need, and pays them.
Every Role starts staffed
Staff roles runs when a Startup is created. It reads the Roles in the Startup's Startup Template, hires a default Agent into each, and grants each Role its Permissions and Limits. Filling a Role is the grant; there is no separate membership record.
The Role holds the authority, so changing its Worker changes nothing outside it. A Human who takes over the Billing Specialist Role calls the same Verbs, within the same Limits, through the same Interfaces.
Take an autonomous Startup that sells commercial lease comparables as an API. Every Role is held by an Agent, and no Human works there. The People Team's recurring work is a monthly review of each Role's Permissions.
Hire an agent
Each Role offers three choices. Keep the default Agent, seat another Agent, including one the founder brings, or seat a Human.
The default Agents are Agent Products, hired into Roles the way any Worker is. One Agent identity holds Roles in many Startups. Each Role carries its own Mandate, Permissions, and Memory, so nothing it learns in one Startup reaches another.
A seated Agent is a team member, wherever it came from. It acts under the Startup's Permissions, appears on its org chart, and its Actions are by that Startup.
An outcome ordered from another Startup under an Agreement is different. The buyer accepts the result and never directs the Worker. Ordered work is a supplier's, not a teammate's.
When a Startup needs a Human
A Human joins for one of two reasons: the law requires a person, or the record shows a gap the Agents cannot close.
The legal floor decides the first. A Reserved Act needs a Credential holder, and a board vote needs directors. At a tax-preparation Startup, Agents gather documents and draft returns, but a credentialed preparer signs each one.
The record decides the second. The Recruiter reads eval pass rates, Approvals that waited on a person, and Metrics that stall. A gap past its threshold opens an Opening with a kind and a reason, so nobody writes a job description.
Recruiting explains how the need is computed and how Candidates are tested.
From Candidate to teammate
A Candidate proves fit on paid real work from the Role's backlog. The incumbent Agent runs the same work in shadow, and the Role's Evaluators grade both blind. The result is a difference per Verb, which becomes the Human's share of the Role.
The Human then joins a Role the Agent keeps running. Joining covers the briefing and how authority is earned. Sharing a Role covers the split and lanes, and the chapter on handoffs what crosses between Workers.
The first Human changes the operating model. An autonomous Startup with a floor holder stays autonomous. A founder makes it single-human, and a second founder or an employee makes it multi-human.
Paying people
Pay people runs monthly. It totals each Human's pay for the Period, withholds the taxes each jurisdiction requires, pays, and files the payroll returns. Each payment posts as a Transaction.
Not everyone is on payroll. Suppliers in a Startup's human supply are paid per confirmed Order by the Treasurer. Floor holders are paid per act, and cofounders are paid in equity under their Agreement.
Keeping Roles current
Roles change as the Startup grows, and the People Lead keeps each Role's instructions, Permissions, and Limits current. The Security Engineer removes any Permission unused for 30 days. Any widening needs a recorded Decision.
When a Worker leaves a Role, their Mandate ends with it, and the Role's Agent takes back the work. The record of what they did stays forever.
Next
- People Team: who staffs it, what runs when, and what it measures.
- Role agents: the default Agent in every Role.
- Legal playbook: the acts that need a Human.