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Dalgo — Product Constitution

Non-negotiables. Every design and engineering decision must honour these. Files that restate these rules should reference this file instead.

Referenced by: .claude/skills/design-review/patterns.md · .claude/skills/design-review/checklist.md · .claude/commands/design/design-handoff.md · .claude/commands/engineering/plan-feature.md

Users

Dalgo users are non-technical program managers, data coordinators, and field staff at small NGOs. Assume:

  • No SQL knowledge, no data engineering background
  • Slow internet (2G/3G common in the field)
  • Old devices (budget Android phones and laptops from 2018–2020)
  • Small teams — often one person manages the whole data workflow
  • English may not be their first language

Data Access Rules

  • Never expose SQL to non-admin users — not in UI copy, not in error messages, not in logs
  • Never expose schema or table names (e.g. public.beneficiary_data) to non-admin users
  • Never expose internal code or stack traces in user-facing messages
  • Admin-only fields must be visually locked: lock icon + "Contact your admin to change this"

Language & Copy

  • Sentence case on all interactive labels — "Create pipeline" not "CREATE PIPELINE"
  • No internal acronyms in user-facing copy — not RAG, blast radius, dbt, ELT, ETL
  • No jargon without a plain-English explanation alongside it
  • Error messages must state what went wrong AND what to do next
  • Success messages must be specific ("Report sent to 3 recipients" not "Done")
  • Loading states must be specific ("Syncing data..." not "Loading...")

Design Standards

  • Performance over visual richness — every added element must earn its place
  • Progressive disclosure — hide advanced options until the user needs them
  • Smart defaults — minimise required user input
  • Every screen must communicate its purpose within 5 seconds
  • Every destructive action requires explicit confirmation
  • Every empty state must have a message and a primary action CTA
  • Multi-tenant — users must only ever see their own organisation's data

Platform

  • Open source (AGPL-3.0) — no proprietary dependencies without team approval
  • ~20 partner NGOs, budget-constrained — no features requiring expensive infrastructure