People

One file per person, people/<slug>.md, giving a stable identifier (the id field, matching the filename stem) for owner: fields used across initiatives/ and projects/. Migrated from life-itself/tao's people/ directory on 2026-09-25 (that copy has since been removed there — see its AGENTS.md); Asdra and Uriel added here directly since they weren't yet in Tao's records.

status: active or departed — keep departed people's records rather than deleting them; several historical owner: references elsewhere in this repo predate someone's departure and shouldn't be silently rewritten as if they'd never been true.

See https://lifeitself.org/team for the public team page.

Identifier convention

Use a lowercase first-name identifier, matching the filename and id (for example, people/rufus.md and id: rufus). Keep the full name in name:. Existing identifiers stay stable; if a future person shares a first name, give the new person a distinguishing initial or surname rather than renaming the existing person.

On 2026-09-25, surname-based IDs were shortened to first names and current portfolio owner: references migrated. Full names remain in name:; person records do not need aliases. Historical source evidence keeps its original identifiers. Beads account email addresses and GitHub usernames are separate identifiers and remain unchanged.

Use the same person ID for future Beads assignments, such as --assignee rufus; see Beads assignee conventions. Existing email-based task assignments are not migrated automatically.

GitHub usernames. A person's ID usually differs from their GitHub username (rufus is rufuspollock, sylvie is shiweiart). That is fine: the github: field in people/<id>.md is the mapping, so anyone can look up who a GitHub account is. Fill it in when you add a person record. Do not use the GitHub username as a Beads assignee.

New people: the record comes first. The ID is fixed by the person record, so a new person gets their people/<id>.md (with github:) before they set BEADS_ACTOR; see setting your identity.

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