Early draft. The ideas are open for debate, the economic model is untested, and JRCv1 is a working standard, not a licence or a certification. Current status.

jrc · 0.1 draft · offline

Check a project in five minutes

Write down how your project meets the six pillars, point at the evidence, and let jrc check what can be checked offline. No account, network, AI provider or permission needed.

Want a starting point first? Assess your repository and download a candidate jrc.json built from what it finds.

What a report is not: a licence, a certification or an endorsement. jrc checks the structure of your manifest and the local files it cites. It can't tell whether your statements are true. Readers should treat every report as a claim to scrutinise.

1. Get the tool

You need Node 20 or newer. Either run it straight from the repository:

npx --yes --package=github:jollyrogercharter/charter jrc --help

or clone it and run it with no install step:

git clone https://github.com/jollyrogercharter/charter.git jrc-tool
node jrc-tool/bin/jrc.mjs --help

Below, jrc stands for either form. The tool has no runtime dependencies and is CC0.

2. Create a manifest

cd your-project
jrc init            # writes jrc.json; refuses to overwrite an existing one

init lists files that look relevant as candidates, such as a licence, a lockfile or CI workflows. It never turns them into claims. That part is yours.

3. Write claims with evidence

Edit jrc.json. For each pillar, set a status and add claims. Each claim points to evidence: a file (optionally pinned by SHA-256), a URL, or a command a reviewer can run. Leave honest gaps. The specification explains every field.

4. Check it

jrc check           # exit 0: valid (incomplete is fine) · 1: invalid · 2: usage error

It rejects evidence paths that leave your project, hashes that don't match, independence claims without a named reviewer, words like "certified" or "endorsed", hidden or look-alike characters, and anything that looks like an email address, token or home-directory path. jrc report refuses to publish a report that would leak one. It never fetches a URL or runs a command from your manifest.

5. Publish the report

jrc report --out jrc-report     # jrc-report.json, JRC-REPORT.md, jrc-badge.svg

Reports are byte-identical every time they're generated from the same manifest. Commit them, link them, and invite people to check your claims. If you show the badge, link it to the report. It always says self-reported unless a named, separate reviewer is recorded.

This project's own report

report.json · jrc.json

1 of 5 applicable pillars evidenced, 3 partly, 1 exploring. Basis: self-reported. Assessor: Claude Opus 5.5 (AI agent), for the human initiator, 2026-10-18.

Pillar	Declared	Level	Gaps we know about
Code and rights	partial	partial	No per-dependency licence inventory has been generated for the npm build dependencies.; The CC0 dedication has not been reviewed by counsel; CC0 does not waive patent rights.
Reproducible development	evidenced	self-reported	—
User data and AT Protocol	not-applicable	not-applicable	The charter site is static. It has no accounts, forms, cookies or analytics, and stores no user records, so there is nothing to export or migrate. This changes when a reference application such as Quartermaster holds user data.
Operations and resiliency	partial	partial	Only one host is deployed, in one person's account; no mirror exists yet.; No incident or security-response procedure is written down.
Economics and human attention	partial	partial	AI usage costs for the founding conversation and the build sessions are unknown.; Human attention has not been measured; no valuation method has been adopted.
Governance and stewardship	exploring	exploring	One person can merge and administer everything; a second owner has been invited but has not joined.; No decision rule, maintainer process or succession plan has been adopted.

Written by the AI agent that built most of what it assesses; treat it as a starting point for criticism, not a verdict.
Independent reproduction: NOT YET VERIFIED. No unaffiliated person has rebuilt or redeployed this project.
This is not a certification. No one has certified it, and no one has endorsed it.

Think we've overclaimed? Tell us. Corrections to this self-assessment are welcome as pull requests to jrc.json.

Then take the challenge

A report says what you claim. The Jolly Roger Challenge tests it: someone else tries to rebuild and run your project without you.