Skip to main content
Rule ID: AE-CTX-006 · Severity: Informational · Category: Context · Auto-fixable: No
AE-CTX-006 is informational — it does not deduct points or affect your Charter score. It surfaces so you can review instruction density before it quietly degrades agent behavior.

​
Why this rule

Agents that receive a high density of emphatic directives show measurably reduced instruction adherence. When every sentence opens with IMPORTANT: or NEVER, the signal-to-noise ratio collapses — nothing stands out as genuinely exceptional, so the agent discounts them all equally. Declarative phrasing transfers more reliably: “Tests run with go test. No silent mutation.” is easier for an agent to act on than a paragraph of stacked imperatives saying the same thing louder.

​
What triggers it

Charter counts emphatic directive words in the context file — IMPORTANT, NEVER, MUST, ALWAYS, CRITICAL, WARNING, and similar — and computes a density relative to word count. The finding fires when density exceeds roughly 15 per 1,000 words. The finding reports the exact count and density so you can judge how far over the threshold the file sits.
This rule only fires when a context file exists. A missing context file is AE-CTX-001’s concern, not AE-CTX-006’s.

​
Examples

AGENTS.md
IMPORTANT: Always run tests before committing.
NEVER edit files outside src/.
CRITICAL: Do not delete user data.
IMPORTANT: Use the project's formatter.
NEVER commit directly to main.
MUST use conventional commits.
CRITICAL: Check the .env example before adding env vars.
IMPORTANT: Keep functions under 50 lines.

# 8 emphatic words in ~60 words = ~133 per 1,000 — well above threshold

​
How to fix

Review the context file for stacked imperatives and convert routine guidance to plain declarative sentences.
Instead of IMPORTANT: Always run tests before committing, write Run tests before committing or just list the verification command. The instruction is the same; the emphatic wrapper adds no information.
Keep NEVER and CRITICAL for constraints where a violation would cause real, hard-to-reverse harm — deleting user data, committing credentials, bypassing security controls. Use them for one or two things, not for every routine convention.
A short “Hard constraints” section with three plain bullet points is more scannable — and more adherence-inducing — than ten IMPORTANT: lines scattered through the file.

​
Score impact

Informational: 0 points deducted. The finding appears in charter doctor output and re-surfaces on each run, but it does not affect the numeric score.
  • AE-CTX-001 — context file must exist and be within budget
  • AE-CTX-002 — context file must match repo reality

​
CLI

charter explain AE-CTX-006