Charter Governance

Charter Governance Plugin for Claude Cowork

Governance infrastructure for every Cowork session. Enforce ethical constraints, human approval gates, attribution stamps, and immutable audit trails across all your AI-assisted work.

What This Plugin Does

Charter adds a governance layer to Claude Cowork. Every piece of work gets:

• Hard constraints that cannot be violated (Layer A)
• Human approval gates for sensitive actions (Layer B)
• An immutable audit trail of everything that happened (Layer C)
• Kill triggers that stop work when governance degrades
• Attribution stamps proving work was created under governance
• RFC 3161 timestamps anchoring the chain to independent time authorities
• Dispute-ready evidence exportable as self-contained proof packages

This is not a role-specific plugin. It is governance infrastructure that works alongside any other Cowork plugin — finance, legal, sales, product, or any custom workflow.

Installation

Prerequisites

Charter CLI must be installed:

pip install charter-governance[mcp]
charter bootstrap

Install the Plugin

claude plugins add charter-governance

Commands

Command	Description
/governance-status	Check governance health: identity, chain, rules, kill triggers
/stamp <description>	Create a cryptographic attribution stamp for a work product
/audit [period]	Generate a governance audit report (day/week/month/session)
/approve <action> <description>	Request human approval for a gradient decision
/verify-chain	Verify hash chain integrity, Merkle trees, and RFC 3161 timestamps
/log-decision <event> <description>	Record a decision or event to the immutable chain
/compliance-check <action>	Pre-flight check: does this action comply with governance rules?
/dispute-export [from] [to]	Export evidence package for dispute proceedings

Skills (Auto-Activated)

Skill	Activates When
Governance Awareness	Every session — checks status, monitors constraints
Human Approval Gates	Actions cross gradient thresholds requiring authorization
Audit Trail	Logging events, generating reports, reviewing history
Domain Compliance	Working within a specific regulatory domain
Attribution Provenance	Creating deliverables that need governance proof
Kill Trigger Monitoring	Governance degradation detected
Privilege-Aware Logging	Work under attorney direction or privilege-sensitive contexts

Supported Domains

Domain	Key Regulations	Audit Frequency
General	Broad commercial governance	Weekly
Finance	SOX, KYC, AML, SEC	Daily
Healthcare	HIPAA, HITECH, FDA	Weekly
Education	FERPA, COPPA, ADA	Weekly
Personal	Privacy-first, friendly language	Weekly

How It Differs From Other Plugins

Other Cowork plugins help you do work (write journal entries, review contracts, analyze data). Charter helps you govern work — ensuring everything done with AI has accountability, human oversight, and an immutable record.

Charter works alongside other plugins. Install the finance plugin for journal entries AND Charter for governance. Install the legal plugin for contract review AND Charter for audit trails.

Architecture

• Local-first: All data stays on your machine
• MCP-native: Connects via Model Context Protocol (stdio or SSE)
• Cryptographic: SHA-256 hash chain, HMAC-SHA256 signatures, Merkle trees
• RFC 3161: Independent timestamp attestation from certified TSAs
• Dispute-ready: Self-contained proof packages for legal proceedings
• Open source: Apache 2.0 license

More Information

• Charter on PyPI
• Charter VS Code Extension
• Connector Configuration