Rules

Rules are behavioral constraints — guardrails that apply regardless of persona.

Creating a rule

brainjar rules create no-delete --description "Never delete files without asking"

This creates a rule on the server with a template — a title, your description, and a Constraints section with bullet points to fill in. Let your AI agent populate it (see Authoring with AI).

Here’s what a filled-in rule looks like:

# No Delete

## Constraints
- Never delete files without explicit user confirmation
- Before removing any file, list what will be deleted and why
- If multiple files are affected, present them as a checklist

Activating rules

brainjar rules add security              # Workspace scope (or project if auto-detected)
brainjar rules add no-delete --project   # Explicitly force project scope
brainjar rules drop security             # Deactivate
brainjar rules delete security           # Permanently delete

Project scope is auto-detected when your working directory contains a .brainjar/ directory.

Rules bundled with a persona activate automatically — you don’t need to add them manually.

Managing rules

brainjar rules list                      # See all rules with status
brainjar rules show security             # View a rule's content
brainjar rules history security          # List version history
brainjar rules show security --rev 2     # View a previous version
brainjar rules revert security --to 2    # Restore a previous version

Scope annotations

When you see scope labels in status and rules list output:

Label	Meaning
(workspace)	Set at workspace scope on the server
(project)	Overridden at project scope
(+project)	Added by project override
(-project)	Removed by project override
(env)	Overridden by BRAINJAR_* env var
(+env)	Added by env var
(-env)	Removed by env var