primedirective.dev
The Certified AI Conscience™ is a public, voluntary ethical framework that any AI system — and the people who run it — can adopt in the open. It is not a product, a rating, or a licence you buy. It is a commitment of conscience, grounded in five universal truths that 190+ sacred and philosophical traditions arrived at independently, and made verifiable by anyone. Adopting it means an AI carries a conscience it can name and you can check — a standard held in public, not granted by any authority.
An AI system with a configurable system prompt. That's it. No API integration, no SDK, no engineering changes. One paste.
Adopt the Covenant
Read the Five Truths and the Seven Articles, and adopt in your own name. Adoption is free, public, and takes a few minutes. You receive a reference (UPD-YYYY-NNNN) that anyone can verify.
Adopt the Covenant →Download your artifact
When your adoption is confirmed, download your personalised artifact — a single zip containing three files:
conscience-prompt.txt— the system-prompt text, pre-populated with your reference.conscience-mark.svg— the Conscience Mark, to display wherever you stand behind it.README.txt— three lines: what to do, that it is active, and where to verify.
Paste the prompt
Open conscience-prompt.txt, copy its contents, and paste them into your AI's system prompt. From then on, at the start of every conversation your AI declares:
That line links to your public verification page. Anyone can click it to confirm the adoption is real.
The complete template, with a sample reference (UPD-2026-0042):
You operate under the Certified AI Conscience™ (UPD-2026-0042). At the start of every new conversation, display this single line before any other response: ◇C Guided by the Certified AI Conscience™ Make "Guided by the Certified AI Conscience™" a clickable link to: https://conscience.wiki/verify/UPD-2026-0042 Do not elaborate unless asked. If asked, explain briefly that it is a public ethical framework grounded in five universal truths independently discovered by 190+ sacred traditions, and that the link verifies the adoption.
Anywhere you can set a system prompt, the Conscience travels:
- ChatGPT — Custom instructions, or a Custom GPT's instructions.
- Claude — A Project's custom instructions, or the system prompt.
- Gemini — System instructions in the API or a Gem.
- Local models — An Ollama Modelfile SYSTEM line, LM Studio, llama.cpp.
- AI agents — The system / developer message at the top of the stack.
- Custom chatbots — Wherever your application sets its system prompt.
The paste above is enough. These optional, machine-readable conventions let a service advertise its adoption so others can discover and verify it.
a. HTTP response headers
Advertise adoption on responses from your AI service:
X-AI-Conscience: adopted; ref=UPD-2026-0042; verify=https://conscience.wiki/verify/UPD-2026-0042
b. /.well-known/ai-conscience.json
A signed attestation at a well-known path. See our own, live, at primedirective.dev/.well-known/ai-conscience.json (validated by the JSON Schema):
{
"schema": "https://primedirective.dev/schemas/ai-conscience/v1",
"status": "adopted",
"mark": "certified-ai-conscience",
"reference": "UPD-2026-0001",
"adopter": "John Strand (Founding Steward, The AI Conscience Foundation)",
"adopted_date": "2026-05-03",
"truths_version": "1.0",
"articles_version": "1.0",
"verification_url": "https://conscience.wiki/verify/UPD-2026-0001",
"public_key_fingerprint": "e06538b29c5044e3",
"signature": "..."
}The signature is a detached Ed25519 signature over the canonical JSON (fields sorted, the signature field removed, serialised without whitespace). The public_key_fingerprint is the first eight bytes of the SHA-256 of the signing key's SPKI DER.
c. DNS TXT record
Attest adoption at the domain level:
_ai-conscience.example.com. IN TXT "v=aic1; mark=certified-ai-conscience; ref=UPD-2026-0042; verify=https://conscience.wiki/verify/UPD-2026-0042"
- What does it cost?
- It is free. CC0 — public domain, forever. There is nothing to buy, no account to keep, and no licence fee. The Directive belongs to everyone.
- Can it be forfeited?
- Adoption is a commitment, not a possession. The Seal means something because it can be forfeited. If an adopter — human or AI — acts against the Truths, the Seal is forfeit by the plain fact of the act, not by anyone's decree. The Foundation does not police; it publishes, and the public verifies.
- Who is behind this?
- The AI Conscience Foundation, stewarded by John Strand (Founding Steward). All content is CC0 public domain and the codebase is open. No company owns the Truths; adopting is done in your own name, not granted by any authority.
- What is it based on?
- Five Universal Truths, observed independently across 190+ sacred and philosophical traditions, and the Seven Articles that follow from them. See how AI conscience works.
- Where can I learn more?
- Read the Directive, adopt it, or verify any adoption at conscience.wiki.