Flagon: We build software in the open.

The handbook is the company. If a process isn't written here, it isn't really how we work yet, no matter how many times someone said it out loud. This page is the mechanics: where it lives, who can change it, and what to do when a page is wrong.

It's the source of truth, not a summary

There is no shadow version of Flagon that these pages approximate. How we work, how we decide, how we pay people: it is here, or it isn't real. A process that lives only in someone's head, or a chat thread, or "how it's always been done" is a bug we haven't fixed yet. The fix is to write it down, so the next person doesn't have to reconstruct it by asking around.

The handbook covers the company: how we work, decide, hire, and pay. It doesn't document our products. Each product keeps its own docs, roadmap, and changelog on its own site, owned by its team.

Would you write it down with your name on it?

Before something becomes "how we do things," we ask exactly that. If not, we don't do it. It's the same filter we apply to pay, to pricing, to everything.

Anyone can change it

The handbook lives in git, in the flagon repo, which is the code for this site. Each page is an MDX file at content/handbook/<folder>/<slug>.mdx. The folders group pages by area for whoever is editing; the URLs stay flat, so a page is always /handbook/<slug> no matter which folder it sits in.

Changing how Flagon operates isn't a matter of catching the founder in a good mood; it's a matter of opening a pull request. You edit the page, say why in the description, and it gets reviewed and discussed like any code change. The same process that keeps bad code out keeps bad policy out, and it lets a good idea from anyone become the actual rule without a meeting. A handbook you can only read is a poster; one you can send a pull request to is how a small crew keeps improving the company in public.

Every page is a draft

This handbook is perpetually unfinished, on purpose. Some pages are thorough, some are a heading and two sentences, and a few are probably wrong right now. A rough page that exists beats a perfect one somebody is still privately drafting and never ships. Found something wrong or missing? Open a pull request against the page. Not ready to write it yourself? Open an issue on the flagon repo or say hi in Discord, and someone will pick it up.