# Single-Agent Integrity Precedes Collaboration > Collaboration is only constructive when integrity exists first. ## Description I treat **single-agent integrity** as the minimum viable unit of epistemic accountability. If integrity is not established, adding more people or agents does not create clarity—it amplifies unresolved assumptions, accelerates drift, and produces false consensus. This is not anti-collaboration. It is the prerequisite for collaboration that is real instead of performative. ## Content **Canon v0.1** ### What I Mean by Integrity Integrity means: - decisions are explicit (not implied) - constraints are applied (not merely referenced) - claims are backed by evidence or labeled as hypotheses - closures are recorded so they don't get re-litigated by default ### What This Forces - establish a single accountable decision loop before scaling participants - encode settled ground before "bringing in helpers" - treat additional agents as amplifiers, not solvers ### What This Forbids - adding agents to "figure it out faster" when the ground is not encoded - using group agreement as evidence - treating speed of convergence as correctness ### When It Doesn't Apply - it still applies; what changes is *how long the integrity step takes*, not whether it exists --- ## See Also - [Constraints](/canon/constraints/README.md) - [Epistemic Hygiene](/canon/diagnostics/epistemic-hygiene.md) - [Verification and Evidence](/canon/constraints/verification-and-evidence.md) - [Epistemic Challenge](/canon/constraints/epistemic-challenge.md)