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Recover from constitution safe mode

Task​

Get Ethos out of safe mode by repairing a malformed ~/.ethos/constitution.yaml.

Result​

The constitution parses cleanly, all your personalities load with their full toolsets, and the operator ceiling (budget caps, forbidden hosts/tools, filesystem bounds, execution posture) is enforced as written.

Steps​

Ethos enters safe mode at startup when ~/.ethos/constitution.yaml exists but cannot be parsed or validated. Safe mode is a fail-closed posture:

  • Only built-in personalities load. Custom personalities are dropped.
  • Surviving personalities keep only a read-only toolset (file/web/memory reads, no terminal, no writes).

You'll see an error on startup naming the parse or validation failure.

  1. Open ~/.ethos/constitution.yaml and find the field named in the error message. Common causes: a non-finite budget.maxUsdPerSession, a host/tool list that isn't an array of strings, an observability.minimum outside none | redacted | full, or invalid YAML syntax.

  2. Correct the field. The constitution must be a YAML mapping. A few examples:

    budget:
      maxUsdPerSession: 5
    forbidden:
      hosts: ["169.254.169.254"]
      tools: ["terminal"]
    observability:
      minimum: redacted

  3. Restart Ethos. The constitution loads, safe mode clears, and your personalities are back with their declared toolsets.

To run without any constitution at all, delete ~/.ethos/constitution.yaml — a missing file is treated as a permissive default, not an error.

Verify​

Confirm safe mode has cleared:

  1. Restart Ethos. The startup log no longer shows the entering SAFE MODE error — a clean start means the constitution parsed.

  2. Confirm a custom (non-built-in) personality is back with its full toolset:

    ethos personality show <personality-id>

    The character sheet lists the personality's declared tools — not just the read-only file/web/memory reads that safe mode leaves behind.

  3. Start a chat and run a tool that safe mode strips (a terminal command or a file write). It executes instead of being rejected as outside the toolset.