ADR 0009: Personas are mindsets, not organizational roles

Status

Superseded by 0036 — personas are recast as heuristic profiles that parameterize a pass (§27); "mindset, not org role" is preserved and made explicit. The original decision text below is kept as history (Nygard, §30.1: an accepted ADR is never edited in place; only this status line is added).

Context

Naming personas after job titles invites org-chart mapping ("only staff engineers do Skeptic"), which defeats the conditioning goal: the same harness adopts different proofs per task.

Decision

Treat personas as constraint sets plus stance scoped to one task session. Roleplay fluff is discouraged; adherence to proofs and forbiddances is mandatory.

The seven shipped personas live as individual skills under /scaffold/.agents/skills/persona-<slug>/SKILL.md (architect, auditor, janitor, migrator, performance-surgeon, skeptic, surveyor), each a standalone unit rather than a single consolidated personas/SKILL.md. Each refined persona body follows a fixed shape that encodes the mindset mechanically: Role / Mindset / Hard constraints / Forbidden actions / Red flags / Persona discipline. The "Persona discipline" block is the cross-cutting guard that forbids softening constraints, silently switching persona, or reverting to default helpfulness mid-task — the structural expression of "mindset, not theatrical voice".

Consequences

• Positive: transferable process; juniors can enforce Skeptic checks when the task demands it.
• Negative: culturally unfamiliar — onboarding must emphasize mindset, not theatrical voice.

Ledger note (2026-06-11): partially superseded by ADR-0064 (personas fold into focused guides).