Profiles

Four distinct concepts share the word “profile”. Conflating them is the most common configuration mistake — always use the qualified name.

1. Experience profile (profile.id)

Who you are — an audience-shaped entry path set by the wizard’s first question. Pre-selects a focused command set, first skills, and personas.

profile.id	Audience
developer (default)	IC engineer
founder	Solo / early-stage founder
content_creator	Writers, ghostwriters, marketers
agency	Multi-client delivery shop
finance	CFO / FP&A
ops	RevOps / support / SRE-adjacent

Switch with agent-config use --profile=<id>. The seed set is fixed for v2.x; a seventh requires an ADR.

2. Cost profile (install --profile=)

How much governance loads, chosen at install time — minimal | balanced | full. Maps onto the legacy rule_loading_tier setting.

3. Discipline profile (discipline_profile)

The successor runtime knob (ADR-110), which wins over rule_loading_tier when set:

Value	Rule surface	Relative token footprint
off (legacy minimal)	Kernel only (9 Iron-Law rules)	~1×
essential	Kernel + lift-carrying rules	~3.3×
full	Kernel + tier-1 + tier-2 (everything)	~11.7× (experimental)
auto	Resolved per session vs host capabilities	varies (default)

balanced was retired 2026-07-07 (measured null lift); existing settings map to essential. The safety floor ships in every value — only the extra coaching changes.

4. Session profile (/profile activate)

An ephemeral pack-surface view for the current session — /profile activate <name> (e.g. developer, finance, content). Writes runtime.active_packs to a gitignored local file; it biases recommendations and never blocks execution. Unrelated to the install --profile flag.

Quick disambiguation

You want to…	Use
Change who the agent is tuned for	experience profile (profile.id)
Change how much governance loads	discipline profile (discipline_profile)
Temporarily narrow the pack surface	session profile (/profile activate)