Constitutional Rules Engine

A constitution is a YAML file. Each rule has name, severity (low | medium | high), applies_when (predicate), must (predicate), explanation, and optional fix.

Predicates

Atomic:

• contains_regex / not_contains_regex
• starts_with_regex / ends_with_regex
• max_words / min_words

Compositional:

• all_of: [...predicates]
• any_of: [...predicates]
• not_: predicate

Fix operations

• append_if_missing: <suffix>
• prepend_if_missing: <prefix>
• replace_regex: \{ pattern: <regex>, replacement: <text> \}

Engine output

Engine.evaluate(text) -> EngineReport returns one RuleResult per rule with status in pass, violation, not_applicable. report.violations() filters to violations and report.max_severity() returns the worst severity present.

Artifact

outputs/rules_report.json carries draft, revised, and structured diff per case.