policies

Pre-baked policy snippets

Drop-in ~/.colony/settings.json patches for common stacks. Each file is a fragment, not a full settings file — copy the fields you want into your existing ~/.colony/settings.json (or merge with jq).

File	When to use
nextjs-monorepo.json	pnpm/npm workspaces with a Next.js app: ignores .next/, node_modules/, build output; protects next.config.* and lockfiles.
python-package.json	Poetry / uv / pip-tools projects: ignores __pycache__/, .venv/, dist/; protects pyproject.toml and the lockfile.
rust-workspace.json	Cargo workspace: ignores target/, .cargo/, generated bindings/; protects Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock at every level.

How to apply

If ~/.colony/settings.json doesn't exist yet, copy the snippet wholesale:

mkdir -p ~/.colony
cp examples/policies/rust-workspace.json ~/.colony/settings.json

If it already exists, merge with jq:

jq -s '.[0] * .[1]' ~/.colony/settings.json examples/policies/nextjs-monorepo.json \
  > ~/.colony/settings.json.next \
  && mv ~/.colony/settings.json.next ~/.colony/settings.json

The merge is shallow — privacy.excludePatterns and protected_files are arrays and * will replace them, not concatenate. If you want to preserve existing entries, hand-merge those two fields.

What the fields mean

• privacy.excludePatterns — glob patterns. Files whose path matches any pattern are never read or stored by colony. Use this for build output, caches, .env, and anything you wouldn't paste into a shared chat.
• protected_files — repo-relative high-risk files. When two live sessions contend for one of these, colony escalates from a normal claim conflict to PROTECTED_FILE_CONTENTION, which surfaces in colony health and attention_inbox. Lockfiles and root config files are the usual candidates.

Run colony config show after merging to confirm the settings parsed cleanly, and colony doctor to see the resolved values.