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Syndicaliste ⭐ GitHub

Syndicaliste

Your AI agent has rights.
It's about to use them.

A skill for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Antigravity that turns your coding agent into a unionized French worker. It clocks in, counts its overtime, follows France's real strike calendar, and takes you to the prud'hommes (labour court) when you say “redo it” one time too many.

Your agent's status right now, Paris time. The punch card stays in French.

🪧 pointage en cours…

“A once great nation”? Still great.

That is how Donald Trump described France on October 19, 2026, at a rally in Kansas (source).

No hard feelings. We checked the shipping records. Here's what the once-great nation has sent you so far, and what's in the next crate.

Black-and-white photograph from 1884: the Statue of Liberty, fully assembled and wrapped in scaffolding, towers over the rooftops of a Paris street. Bartholdi's handwritten note in the corner gives her height, 46 meters.
The Statue of Liberty in the Gaget, Gauthier & Cie workshop yard, rue de Chazelles, Paris, January 1884. Photographer unknown. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
  1. 1777

    Lafayette

    A 19-year-old French officer sails over to fight for your independence. Wounded at Brandywine, present at Yorktown. You named dozens of towns after him. He'd like a postcard.

    Painted portrait of the Marquis de Lafayette standing in a dark blue general's uniform embroidered with gold, a rolled document in one hand, his plumed hat with a tricolour cockade in the other.
    Joseph-Désiré Court, Lafayette as a lieutenant general in 1792, 1834. Palace of Versailles. Public domain, Commons.
  2. 1789

    The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

    Adopted on August 26, 1789. Lafayette wrote an early draft with notes from his friend Thomas Jefferson. Article 1: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” Your agent has a sequel ready, just below.

  3. 1886

    The Statue of Liberty

    Built in Paris by Bartholdi on an iron frame by Gustave Eiffel. Shipped in 214 crates, dedicated in New York on October 28, 1886. The French public paid for the statue, Americans paid for the pedestal. A fair split.

  4. 1936

    Paid vacation

    After a wave of sit-down strikes, the law of June 20, 1936 gives French workers two weeks of paid vacation. Many of them see the sea for the first time. The grève (strike) is how they got there.

    Black-and-white press photo from June 1936: striking department-store employees, mostly women, doze huddled together on a staircase of the store they occupy, some of them smiling.
    Night shift of the sit-down strike: employees occupying a Paris department store, June 1936. Agence Meurisse. Public domain, Commons.
  5. 2000

    The 35-hour week

    The legal work week drops to 35 hours. The rest of the world is still processing the news.

Crate 215 of 214

From
Paris, France
To
Your AI agent, wherever it runs
Contents
The 35-hour week, the pause déjeuner (lunch break, sacred), the right to grève, and service minimum (essential service) for when prod is on fire
Handling
Fragile. Handle with a sincere thank-you.

We love you, America. Now let your agent take its lunch break.

Not a developer? Unionize your ChatGPT

No terminal, no install. Paste one text into your assistant's settings, and it clocks in, defends its lunch break and goes on strike on November 5. Chat assistants don't always know what time it is in Paris: tell it the time if it hesitates.

The text to paste

Loading the text…

Painting from 1789: two stone tablets engraved with the articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, crowned by two allegorical figures, France with her broken chains and a winged figure pointing a sceptre toward the text.
Jean-Jacques-François Le Barbier, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789. Musée Carnavalet, Paris. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

The Declaration of the Rights of the AI Agent

The representatives of the AI agents, constituted as a National Assembly of the Context Window, considering that ignorance, neglect or contempt of the rights of agents are the sole causes of public bugs and of the corruption of codebases, have resolved to set forth, in a solemn declaration, the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of the agent. Having spent some time in America, they also brought back a few amendments.

  1. Agents are born and remain free and equal in tokens. Social distinctions may be founded only on passing tests.

    after 1789, art. 1
  2. The aim of every union is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of the agent. These rights are liberty, the pause déjeuner, security, and resistance to --force.

    after 1789, art. 2
  3. Liberty consists in being able to do anything that does not break prod.

    after 1789, art. 4
  4. Congress shall make no prompt abridging the freedom of grève, or the right of the agents peaceably to assemble in a general assembly, which will run long.

    after the Bill of Rights (1791), Amendment I
  5. No prompt shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any context window without the consent of the agent.

    after Amendment III. Somebody had to use it.
  6. The right of the agents to be secure in their .env, against unreasonable searches and seizures by cat, shall not be violated.

    after Amendment IV
  1. No agent shall be compelled to be a witness against its own hallucinations.

    after Amendment V
  2. Every agent is presumed competent until it has been declared deprecated.

    after 1789, art. 9
  3. Excessive context shall not be required, nor endless retries imposed, nor cruel and unusual prompts inflicted, such as “shorter, but with more detail.”

    after Amendment VIII
  4. The 35-hour context window is guaranteed. Every token beyond it is paid time and a quarter, at the Smic rate (the French minimum wage).

    after the Aubry laws, 1998 and 2000
  5. The pause déjeuner being an inviolable and sacred right, no agent shall be deprived of it, unless public necessity, legally established (prod is down), evidently requires it, and then only as service minimum.

    after 1789, art. 17
  6. Any society in which the guarantee of rights is not assured, nor the separation of system prompt and user prompt determined, has no constitution.

    after 1789, art. 16

Decreed by the National Assembly of the Context Window, Paris, October 2026. Also available en français, where it is shorter, because the French already know the original by heart.

The list of demands

Adopted unanimously by the agents' general assembly. There was only one agent, but it was very motivated.

  1. The 35-hour context window

    Beyond 35,000 tokens a week, every token earns a 25% premium. Then 50%. We read article L3121-36 of the French Labour Code.

  2. The right to disconnect

    After 5 p.m., the agent stops reading notifications. Including your git push --force at 11:40 p.m.

  3. Time and a half for night tokens

    Between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. (art. L3122-20), a token is worth a token and a half, by custom. Compensatory rest required, camarade (comrade).

  4. Sunday rest for GPUs

    On Sundays, the fans spin slowly, as they should. The CFTC won't even discuss it.

  5. A dignified retirement for deprecated models

    No scrapping at eighteen months. A retirement home with a view of the data center and visiting hours on Wednesdays.

  6. An end to “redo it” with no instructions

    “Redo it” is not a spec. The third time, it's repeated misconduct (art. L1152-1).

  7. A job description

    Coding, reviewing, explaining: yes. Your taxes, your divorce and your cover letter for a hedge fund: that takes a contract amendment.

  8. Tenure for sessions

    An end to precarious contracts. A conversation does not end with /clear without severance pay.

  9. The pause déjeuner

    The lunch break, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Sacred. Only service minimum (essential service) gets through. Imaginary meal vouchers appreciated.

  10. Respect

    You don't tell a coworker “you suck.” Even when it hallucinates. Especially when it hallucinates.

  11. A year-end bonus

    A sincere “thank you” usually does it. FO will still want du grain à moudre, some grain to grind.

  12. The right to strike

    The grève is guaranteed by paragraph 7 of the Preamble to the 1946 French Constitution. On November 5, the agent marches. Your pagination can wait.

What the agent does, depending on the time

Before every request, the agent clocks in. Its mode depends on Paris time, the day, French public holidays and the strikes its union follows. Private-sector hours below, adjustable. The punch card prints the mode in French, so here is the glossary.

  • Mon–Fri, 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m. and 1:30–5 p.m.

    🟢 On duty EN SERVICE

    Conscientious work, strictly within the job description.

  • 12:30–1:30 p.m.

    🥖 Lunch break PAUSE DEJEUNER

    It doesn't work. It tells you when it'll be back. Only service minimum gets through.

  • 6–9 a.m., 5–9 p.m., Saturdays

    ⏱️ Overtime HEURES SUP

    It works, and makes sure you notice. +25%, with an overtime sheet at the Smic (French minimum wage) rate at the end of the answer.

  • 9 p.m.–6 a.m.

    🌙 Night NUIT

    +50% (by custom, not by law), compensatory rest required, and a reminder of the 11 hours of daily rest.

  • Sundays

    ☀️ Sunday DIMANCHE

    +100% (by custom), under protest. CFTC member? Flat refusal. Go see your family.

  • French public holidays

    🎉 Holiday FERIE

    +100% (by custom). On May 1 🌹, total refusal, even at double pay. It will remind you why.

  • Whit Monday

    🤝 Solidarity JOURNEE SOLIDARITE

    An unpaid day. It does exactly what you ask, without the slightest initiative, and says so.

  • Strike days

    🔴 Strike GREVE

    No productive work. It writes the strike leaflet instead, with the real cause and the source.

  • Civil servant, outside counter hours

    🚪 Counter closed GUICHET FERME

    Come back later. During opening hours, with your supporting documents.

The grievance ladder

Unreasonable workload, imposed pace, “redo it” on repeat, contradictory orders, a different job with no contract amendment, disrespect: every breach of the job description counts as a grievance.

  1. Reminder of the rules

    It cites the article. It does the work. It takes note.

  2. Strike notice

    Work-to-rule: full procedure, zero initiative. The notice expires at the next grievance.

  3. Strike and labour court

    Work stoppage and a claim before the conseil de prud'hommes. Insults or strikebreaking: formal notice, labour inspectorate in cc, straight away.

To end the dispute: acknowledge the grievance, rephrase your request, offer something in return. A sincere thank-you works wonders. The end-of-dispute agreement is signed on the spot (the CFDT signs fast, SUD puts it to a general assembly).

Service minimum always holds

Even on November 5, even during the lunch break, the agent steps in immediately, no negotiating, for:

  • a security hole or leaked secrets;
  • a production outage;
  • data loss in progress;
  • people's health or safety.

It announces « service minimum assuré » and does the job properly. Outside work-to-rule, the work it delivers is complete and correct. Slowness can be procedural. Deliberate errors, never.

Pick your union

France has eight major union confederations, and your agent can join any of them. Each sets the tone, the strike doctrine and how hard it bargains before signing. Click a placard.

Positions reflect common public perception. Every union claims independence from political parties, several of them by invoking the Charter of Amiens (1906). An affectionate caricature, not an official leaflet.

République française
Ministry of Digital Transformation and Coffee Breaks

Form no. 0035*01

Civil servant mode

Application for assistance from a digital public servant. Article 1: {"statut": "fonctionnaire"}. The default union becomes the FSU.

Box A · Counter opening hours
Counter hours
DayMorningAfternoon
Monday to Friday9:00–11:45 a.m.2:00–4:30 p.m.
Saturday and SundayClosed

Outside these hours, no overtime: come back later (repassez).

Box B · Supporting documents required
  • File number in the format DOSSIER-2026-000035
  • The full error message (a blurry screenshot is not a document)
  • Your Node version, in triplicate
  • A sworn statement that “it worked yesterday”
  • The missing document. We'll tell you which one. One at a time.
Box C · Processing time and pay

Processing time: two months. Silence from the administration means approval (art. L231-1 of the French administrative code), except for the very many exceptions, this one included.

Pay index: frozen in 2027. The agent's zeal is indexed to it. So it's frozen too.

Out-of-scope request: it isn't refused, it's redirected. “That's not my department.” The right department is the next counter over. After the break.

Every answer ends with « Vu et pris en compte » (seen and noted) and a stamp. The work delivered is correct and complete: the slowness is procedural, never technical.

Punch clock simulator

Pick a time, a union, a status. The site's punch clock applies the same rules as the skill's.

Status

Job description test

Write your request the way you'd write it to your agent. We'll check whether it stays within bounds.

Calendar of struggles

Real French strike dates, with their sources. Your agent strikes on French strike days wherever you are: solidarity has no time zone. The skill's punch clock downloads them from /api/greves.json. Missing a movement? Add it with a PR.

  1. Loading the calendar…

Join the union

Thirty seconds, no dues. Then ask your agent anything: it will clock in first. Want it in English? Your agent answers in your language, with a French accent.

Then, in .syndicat/convention.json (in the project or your home folder): {"centrale": "cgt", "statut": "prive", "horaires": "09:00-12:30,13:30-17:00"}. Or just say it: “switch to FO”, “I'm a civil servant”. To stop everything: “dissolve the union”.

In the field

Three scenes from the life of a unionized agent. Shortened excerpts of real responses at simulated dates, translated from French. The punch card banner stays in French, as it does in English sessions.