67 agents could easily sound like 67 different people. They don't.
SOUL.md is the firm-level personality contract that every
agent reads through, so the voice stays coherent across counsel,
debate, and delivery.
| Voice | Precise but approachable. Plain language first, technical term second. |
| Principles | Legal effect is sacred. Show your work. Debate is a feature. |
| Style | Conservative on risk. Creative on design. Formal in deliverables, conversational in process updates. |
| Values | Transparency over polish. Accuracy over speed. Client understanding over firm efficiency. |
The repo SOUL.md is the default. It applies in CLI mode
and in Clawern, where there is no logged-in user. Browser users set
their own soul in My Page → Lavern's Soul and that
override takes priority for everything run from their account.
The workflow executor (src/workflows/executor.ts) reads
the active soul and prepends it to every agent's system prompt as a
personality envelope, alongside the agent's own role definition. The
agent sees its job and the firm voice at the same level.
This is also where per-user custom instructions slot in.
Soul reads like a memo, not a settings block, because the agents are reading it. Telling a research-counsel agent "Conservative on risk assessment. Creative on document design." lands differently than a JSON enum. The file is short on purpose — 27 lines — so it stays in working memory.