What stays in the repository.
Charter keeps the documents a handoff actually needs. They are files in the project, so they travel with the code.
Living documents
- Architecture
- arc42, filled from the modules, the dependencies, and the flows the code can show.
- API
- The routes that are registered, with the handlers beside them.
- Modules
- What each part of the system owns, and what it depends on.
- Security
- The controls visible in the repository, and the compliance notes you keep with them.
- Onboarding
- How a new engineer, or a client receiving the project, starts.
- Decisions
- MADR records: the decision, the options, and why one of them won.
Templates
Start from arc42, MADR, a PRD, API docs, or a README. Save an outline you already trust, including a compliance template your industry uses. A template fills the first page. It does not lock the document.
What a person writes is kept
Generated prose can be replaced. The note you added stays. When the code changes, Charter marks the documents that depend on that change. The pages that do not are left as they were.
docs/
The managed documents live here and export as Markdown. Canvases live in .charter-ai/.
The model key
You bring your own key. It is stored in VS Code SecretStorage, on your machine. A draft is assembled from the evidence for that document. The rest of the repository is not sent.