Initiative Framework¶

Version: 1.1.0

Status: Active

Owner: Rafael da Silva Guerra

Purpose¶

This document defines what an initiative is, how a new one is created under W7, and what it inherits versus what it is free to define for itself.

Context¶

WarTips is the first initiative. It will not be the last. Without a written framework, each new initiative would be created by copying whatever WarTips happened to do, mistakes included, and the reasoning behind W7's structure would have to be reverse-engineered every time. This document is written so that the second, fifth and twentieth initiative can be started with the same clarity as the first.

What an Initiative Is¶

An initiative is a distinct effort — technical, educational, creative or otherwise — created under the W7 ecosystem to pursue a specific purpose, with its own audience, its own cadence, and typically its own repository.

An initiative is not a legal entity, a product, or a team. It may eventually contain several products (see Product Framework), or none yet. WarTips today is a single initiative expressed through documentation and content; it may grow into several products later without becoming a different initiative.

What Every Initiative Inherits¶

Every initiative, without exception, inherits from the layers above it in Architecture Overview:

The Constitution, Manifesto, Vision and Legacy — by reference, never by copy.
The W7 Identity rules for how it relates to the master brand.
The Governance model, at least until it earns enough scale to warrant its own initiative-specific governance layer.
The Documentation, Engineering and GitHub standards.

What Every Initiative Defines for Itself¶

Its own name, voice and visual expression, within the bounds of the Identity layer.
Its own audience, cadence, and choice of products.
Its own technology choices, following the principles (not the specific tools) in Technology Stack.
Its own repository, issue tracker and release process when its work requires them.

An initiative that finds itself needing to contradict a Foundation-layer principle to succeed is a signal to raise that contradiction through the Decision Framework — not to quietly diverge.

Creating a New Initiative¶

State the purpose. One paragraph: what this initiative exists to do that no existing initiative already covers.
Answer the Constitution's four questions (Article VI) for the initiative as a whole, not just for a single product inside it.
Register it in docs/initiatives/<initiative-name>/README.md in this repository, using templates/initiative-template.md. WarTips is the first completed example, not the template itself.
Add it to the ecosystem table in the root README.md and to the Roadmap if it is not yet active.
Create the initiative's own repository, if it needs one, following the GitHub Standard.

A new initiative does not need permission to exist experimentally — it needs this process before it is presented as an official, active part of the W7 ecosystem.

Retiring an Initiative¶

Initiatives end. That is expected, not a failure (see Legacy). Retiring one means: marking its entry Status: Retired in docs/initiatives/, keeping its documentation rather than deleting it, and recording the decision as an ADR if the initiative had any dependents relying on it.

Product Framework — how a specific product inside an initiative is created
Decision Framework — how to resolve a conflict between an initiative and the Foundation
templates/initiative-template.md — the canonical registration structure at the repository root
WarTips — the first initiative registered with this framework
Governance — how authority over an initiative is assigned