NorthbookMake the work predictable.

Find the answer. Act within 60 seconds. Place your initiative on the SLI map or Read the Verify-in-10 guide.

Northbook is the public operating contract for docs, labs, and automation. Everything here exists to get you to the right page and a runnable next step inside one minute.

Your 60-second path ​

1. Map your initiative — Use the SLI map to confirm the seam and constraint.
2. Learn before running — Read the Verify-in-10 guide for the why/when/anti-patterns.
3. Run the lab — Execute the 10-minute lab and capture receipts as you go.
4. Post receipts & state — Follow Quick-Run and update State so the ledger reflects reality.

Protect the North Star. Every page shows owner, band, exit metric, State, and Receipts. Default deny outside the guardrails. Exceptions are allowed only with owner, reason, expiry, rollback, and stop rule.

Ops guardrails we enforce ​

1. Default deny outside guardrails — No contract, no work.
2. Public Band‑A content only — Sanitized for public sharing; no internal data or secrets.
3. Runnable in 10 minutes — Labs, annexes, and automation must finish locally inside the limit.
4. Exceptions auto-expire — No entry, no work after expiry.
5. One owner and date per change — Traceability from Change → Decision → Guardrail → Page → Signal → Receipt.
6. Sanitize before publish — Frontmatter complete, links live, names redacted.

Automation enforces frontmatter schema, guardrail links, build integrity, secret scans, and state freshness. Read the North Star & Guardrails playbook for the full contract.

Receipts we publish every cycle ​

• Adoption — Pages touched, time-to-answer, CTA telemetry from the Signal Registry.
• Quality — Verify-in-10 lab pass rate, link health, accessibility quick wins.
• Credibility — State freshness, release tags, and exception closure rate.

Check the live ledger on the State page or open the current release bundle.

Build or change a page ​

1. Map the change to an existing guardrail or log an exception + decision before starting.
2. Run pnpm run docs:guard to enforce frontmatter, guardrails, and Band-A sanitization.
3. Run pnpm run docs:build to confirm the site compiles cleanly.
4. Keep owner, date, guardrail mapping, and acceptance checklist visible in the doc or PR.
5. Post receipts via pnpm run state:build and link them inside the release folder.

Stop rule: If CI adds more than 15 minutes per day across two weeks, remove the last added check and raise a decision before re-enabling it.

When to raise your hand ​

• New joiner? Start with the FAQ for New Joiners plus the Handshake contracts.
• Making a scope call? Open the Decision Spine and Decision tripwires.
• Unsure if content belongs? Re-check Band A and the Contracts directory.
• Need facilitation or handover help? Use the 20-minute handover runbook or the Handover RACI template.

If this page didn’t get you to an answer in 60 seconds, tell us so we can fix it. We'll log the feedback, post receipts, and adjust within the next cycle.