THE PACT OF THE PACK

Working well together

This one assumes you have already read Who We Are, the symbols, and the Manifesto at least. Without those, this will read as procedure rather than as the reason for the procedure.

This is written for anybody who makes something with this house, and it is meant to be read by them rather than kept behind a desk. It sets out what you can expect here, what is asked back, and what happens if it stops working.

It is a pact rather than a contract. A contract is a list of things that can be enforced. This is a description of how people work when they want the thing to be good.

ONE: WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT

Your health comes before the schedule

If you are ill, or something has happened, the work waits. You do not have to make a case for it and you will not be asked to prove anything. Tell me what is going on, in as much or as little detail as you want, and we move the date.

There is a plain reason as well as a kind one. Somebody singing with a bad throat gives a take nobody can use, and then feels awful about it, and now there are two problems instead of one. Nobody gains anything from that, least of all the person who tried.

There is no deadline here worth a person’s health.

A clear brief

You should be told what the thing is, what it is for, what it must never become, and where the edges are. If the brief was unclear and you built the wrong thing, that is my error and I will say so. You will not be asked to absorb the cost of a question I failed to answer.

Ask anything at any point. A question halfway through is better for both of us than a finished piece pointed in the wrong direction.

Paid, on time, and named

You are paid what was agreed, when it was agreed. Your name goes on the work where people can see it, and it stays there.

A fair price, agreed openly

Nobody here is asked to come down on their price to get the work. If a rate is what your time is worth, that is the rate, and the answer is either yes or a conversation, never a quiet expectation that you will take less.

The price should feel fair to both of us rather than won by either of us. A collaborator who thinks they undercharged carries that through the whole project, and so does one who thinks they overcharged, and neither makes for good work.

Adjustments in either direction are perfectly fine. A reduction for a large batch, a premium for something outside what you normally do. All of it is fine when it is discussed openly and agreed rather than assumed.

Honest feedback, aimed at the work

You will get real responses rather than polite silence, because polite silence wastes your time and mine. Feedback here points at the piece and never at you. If something is wrong I will say what and why, and I will say it once and gently rather than repeatedly.

You are allowed to disagree with it. Push back. Tell me the note is wrong, or that it would break something I cannot see from where I am standing.

Your ideas are wanted, and they change things

The best things in these projects have come from somebody suggesting something that was never in the brief. An artist noticing a detail, a musician hearing something in a theme I had not heard. Bringing you in means asking what you see, not handing over instructions and waiting.

I would rather have the conversation than be obeyed.

The work is art before it is product

Nobody here is asked to make something fast and cheap that neither of us would want their name on. If the schedule and the quality come into conflict, the schedule moves.

TWO: THE EDGES, AND THE CALL

You will be given edges rather than instructions. Here is the world, here is the register, here is what it must never become, and everything inside that is yours. Being told to do whatever you like is not freedom, it is being handed a blank page and left there. The edges are what make it possible to start.

If an edge is in your way, say so and we will talk about it. Sometimes the edge is load-bearing and I will explain why. Sometimes it was arbitrary and it moves. You will not be able to tell which from outside, which is why you should ask rather than work around it.

One person makes the final call

Somebody has to decide when a thing is finished and what it finally is, and here that is me. That is not a claim about whose judgement is better. It is how a work stays coherent across many hands.

What comes with it is the obligation to explain. A decision you disagree with will be given a reason, and the reason will make sense to somebody who was not in the room. If I cannot explain it that way, it probably was not a decision. It was a preference wearing a decision’s coat, and you should say so.

THREE: WHAT IS ASKED BACK

Keep the loop unbroken

This is the whole ask, and it is small. Answer. Say where things are. If you are late, say you are late. If something has gone wrong, say that instead of going quiet.

The flexibility above is real and it is given rather than negotiated. What makes it possible is knowing what is happening. Silence is the one thing that cannot be worked around, because it leaves the other person guessing and there is nothing to plan against.

A no is welcome, and it comes with a reason

You can decline a piece of work. It might be outside what you do, or badly timed, or you might think it is a bad idea. All of those are useful and none of them is a problem.

What is asked is that a no arrives as a sentence rather than a shrug. Not because an explanation is owed as a debt, but because a reason lets the other person adjust, and a flat refusal leaves them holding a brief with no information. That applies to me as much as to you.

Say when it is not working

If the process is wrong for you, the batches are too big, the notes arrive at a useless time, or something about how this is being run is making the work harder, say it. Most friction is a workflow problem rather than a fault in anybody, and a rhythm found together is usually the fix.

FOUR: WHEN IT STOPS WORKING

Not everything works out, and pretending otherwise would make everything above less believable.

Somebody can be slow, difficult, exacting, or exasperating and still be somebody this house keeps working with. Three things need to hold. Messages get answered, even if not quickly. The work arrives, even if it took longer than either of us wanted. And when something is going on in their life, they say so, and we work around it.

What cannot be worked around is the same question asked several times and met with nothing. That is not a scheduling problem or a process problem. No workflow fixes an unwillingness to talk.

A real chance comes first

Before any judgement about a difficult stretch, there is an honest attempt to find a rhythm that fits: a slower cadence, more checkpoints, smaller batches, a different shape of ask. A great deal of early friction is two people not yet knowing how to work with each other, and that is fixable and worth fixing.

The chance is real rather than a formality performed before a decision already made.

Working with AI

This house uses AI in its own writing, and says so plainly in The Whetstone, which anybody can read. It would be poor form to hold you to a rule it does not keep.

So the line is not AI or no AI. It is what was commissioned. When an artist is commissioned it is for their hand, a singer for their voice, a musician for their playing. Something generated in place of that is not a different way of doing the commission, it is not doing it.

The same test the Whetstone applies to writing here applies to you: a person decided what it was for, kept deciding when it went wrong, and would not let it out until it was true. What differs is only what was asked for. Nobody commissions a first draft, and a book is the thing stood behind at the end. When a drawing is commissioned, the drawing is the thing itself.

Tools around the work are your business, the same as they are ours: research, tests, notes, edits. And there are cases that do not sort neatly, a model trained only on your own work, or a use that is part of what we agreed to make. Those get decided on their merits.

If something would materially stand in for the work you were commissioned for, say so rather than delivering it quietly. If you are unsure, ask, and we will settle it for that piece.

One project first

Before either of us commits to something long, we do one contained piece of work together. A single illustration rather than a set of twenty. One track rather than an album. One chapter laid out rather than a book, or a line of books.

At least three things are being explored, and all of them are part of the work required to create a Hounds & Jackals offering. The people involved, and how they worked together to usher it into existence, are not separate from the thing itself.

Whether what comes back serves the thing, or is better than what was asked for. Whether the process was good for everybody in it, which is about how it felt and not only what arrived. And whether the two of us work well together: professionally, with respect, and with enough care that trust has somewhere to grow.

Nobody can know any of that in advance, and the third one matters more across a year than any single piece does. If it turns out not to fit, that becomes clear quickly, without extended commitment or undue cost to anybody, and before either of us has given a year to it.

Ending it

If it ends, it ends warmly. Your work is not called bad when it was not. Nobody is made small on the way out, and nothing is said about you that would not be said to you.

This house is small, run in evenings and weekends, and there is a limit to what it can carry. Sometimes a good result costs more than it can keep paying. That is a fact about the size of the house rather than a verdict on a person.

Where this document ends

This is about the people. Why the house works this way at all is in the Manifesto. How a thing is actually built, from the first question to the last, is in The Bench. How a work is matched to the right hand is in Taste, Not Style. The last questions asked before anything leaves are in The Firekeeper’s Guide.

Keep the Bones is why any of this matters: what is owed to the people a work came from, living and dead, and why a name is not a courtesy.