People Configuration

Defines the people The Engineer works with — their roles and contact information. This is the directory The Engineer uses to know who to reach, who can approve, and how to contact them.

File: ~/.engineer/config/people.yamlWhen changes apply: on the next engineer start. Edit the file, then restart the daemon.

Single-User in v1

The Engineer assumes the human side is exactly one person — the owner. The owner assigns the work, answers the questions, and reviews the output. Every message to a human targets the owner.

This is a deliberate, scoped constraint — see ../constraints.md for the full rationale and the two things it does not relax (one user is still many tasks; one user is still many plugins).

What this means for this file:

• Configure one person, with role owner. That is the whole directory in v1.
• The owner is assumed, not required. The Engineer still starts with no owner configured — but it warns, because without a contact it cannot reach you when a task is blocked, needs additional context, or needs a decision during requirements gathering.
• Extra people are not contacted. You may list more entries (the schema allows it), but v1 reaches only the owner. The Engineer warns when more than one person is configured.

These checks surface at daemon startup (logged) and on demand through the People Directory category of engineer doctor.

Structure

The file contains a single people array. Each entry is a person:

people:
  - id: farzam
    name: Farzam Mohammadi
    roles: [owner]
    contacts:
      - channel: telegram
        handle: "farzammoh"
      - channel: github
        handle: "FarzamMohammadi"

Person Schema

Field	Type	Required	Description
id	string	Yes	Unique identifier. Used internally for lookups.
name	string	Yes	Display name (used in notifications and logs).
roles	string[]	Yes	Role tags. In v1, the meaningful role is "owner".
contacts	Contact[]	Yes	At least one contact method (see below).

Roles

Roles are free-form strings. Two are recognized:

Role	Effect
owner	The single human The Engineer reaches. Receives all outreach; can /approve PRs (when comment approval is enabled).
reviewer	Can /approve PRs (when comment approval is enabled), but is not contacted for outreach in v1.

The reviewer role is a remnant of the multi-person model the directory once supported. Under the single-user constraint, outreach goes to the owner only; reviewer affects PR-approval authorization, not who gets messaged.

Contacts

Each contact maps a person to a communication channel.

Field	Type	Required	Description
channel	string	Yes	Communication channel: "telegram", "github", "email", etc.
handle	string	Yes	User identifier on that channel.

The channel value must match an installed communication plugin's channel. For example:

• telegram — matched by the telegram-comm plugin. Handle is the Telegram username (without @).
• github — matched by the github-comm plugin. Handle is the GitHub username (case-insensitive).

If the owner has a contact on a channel that no installed communication plugin handles, The Engineer warns — at startup and in engineer doctor — because messages on that channel cannot be delivered. The warning names the channel and points here.

GitHub handles are also used for /approve authorization — when enable_comment_approval is enabled in safety config, the PR comment author is matched against github contact handles.

No Owner Configured

If people.yaml is missing, has an empty people array, or has no person with role owner, The Engineer still operates but:

• It logs a warning at startup (and engineer doctor reports it) explaining that it cannot reach you when blocked, needs context, or needs a decision.
• No personal notifications are sent. On GitHub, it can still post ticket comments on the issue.
• When enable_comment_approval is enabled, any PR commenter can /approve (no authorization check). This is the solo-dev fallback.

The owner is assumed, not required — The Engineer never refuses to start over a missing contact. It makes the trade-off visible instead of letting it surprise you at the first blocker.