What happens
The command triggers a written protocol and adds nothing of its own — the session reads the Onboarding Protocol in full and follows it as a script. The interview asks five real questions, one at a time; where a sensible default exists it is stated, not asked. Nothing is written until the dry run: the birth tool’s plan is read together before any --write, so you see exactly what your instance will contain before it exists.
The birth itself is executed by the genesis tool: your project’s name becomes its opener command, its ledger starts empty, its kernel arrives complete — constitution, formats, procedures, checkers. The interview then stops at the handoff, deliberately: everything after birth belongs to the new instance’s own sessions, under its own rules. The midwife does not follow you home.
Onboarding ends at your first close, not at your birth — the guided rail offers one move per loop and then retires itself. The guidance fades by design.
Why it’s shaped this way
A birth is the one act that crosses jurisdictions: it runs in FRACTAL’s copy and produces a repository FRACTAL has no say over. The interview keeps that boundary sharp — defaults stated so the questions stay real, the dry run read together so consent is informed, the handoff so sovereignty starts on day one. The path has been walked under stranger conditions, through to a real birth with both checkers green.
The shipped file: begin.md ↓ — verbatim. It is a thin trigger over the Onboarding Protocol, which remains the script of record.