Security and Trademarks

Badger is modelled on the harness-rewrite tradition — the public practice of porting an existing agent harness to a new language / runtime with the explicit goal of “better harness tools, not merely storing the archive”. We must not name the upstream by brand in live source, docs, error messages, or CLI text.

Banned phrases (live source/docs/tests)

The following phrases are forbidden in chimera/badger/, docs/badger/, tests/badger/, and the site/src/content/docs/badger/ mirror:

Claw Code (any case)
claw-code (any case)
clawhip (any case)

Allowed: filesystem-fact paths

Bare path mentions are allowed because they describe an existing on-disk layout we may ingest (settings, history, etc.). The following patterns are explicitly permitted:

~/.claw/
.claw/
~/.claw\b

These describe filesystem facts, not brand claims. They will not trigger the trademark scrub.

Allowed: comparative phrasing

When referring to the upstream we use neutral phrasing:

badger
the upstream
the harness-rewrite tradition

Scrub script

scripts/badger_trademark_scrub.sh enforces the rules above. It runs in CI and locally:

bash scripts/badger_trademark_scrub.sh

Exit 0 = clean. Exit 1 = a banned phrase slipped in. The script grep’s the live tree only — comparative research notes under research/badger/ are out of scope (they’re allowed to quote the upstream verbatim).

Why the policy exists

The harness-rewrite tradition explicitly disclaims affiliation with the upstream. Naming the upstream in live source confuses users about provenance, exposes the project to needless legal questions, and distracts from the technique. Keeping the upstream’s name out of badger keeps the focus where it belongs: on the harness.

Reporting a violation

Open a GitHub issue tagged trademark-hygiene. Include the file path and the offending phrase. We treat reports as low-noise / high-priority even when the diff is trivial.