To build a servitor, name it, give it one job, write its limits, pick what feeds it, describe a form or let it choose one, and write an end date and the words that dissolve it before you charge it.

A servitor is a process you start on purpose.

In chaos magic, or chaos magick, it is the other main technique beside the sigil. A sigil fires once. A servitor stays on the job until you end it.

That last part is where people get hurt. The danger is complacency: a helper left running long after you stopped watching it.

I know. I did it. Most of the names I made I retired clean, but one I buried instead of ending, and it is still in there somewhere.

Put the off switch on paper before the thing ever runs, and you never have to write that sentence.

Some writers call a servitor a psychological tool. Some call it an entity. I don't much care which, because the build is the same: make it, watch it, check the results, end it.

The charter is a work order

Six fields. A name, a job, limits, a feeding, a form, and an end. If one is blank, the order does not ship.

The Servitor Bench prints those six fields as a one page charter card. On paper it takes ten minutes.

1. Name it

Short. You'll say this name out loud on the day you end it, so pick one you can say plainly.

Draw a sigil from it if you like. The Bench does that with any of the three methods.

2. One job

Write the job in one sentence. If the sentence needs an "and," you have two servitors.

Build two. Or pick one.

"Remind me to drink water" is a job. "Make my life better" is a wish. A job is something you can check at the end of a week, and a wish has no end condition at all.

3. Limits

Write the limits before you charge anything. What it may not do. Who it may not touch.

The limits are the whole safety case. Nothing else on the card protects anybody.

A servitor built to land you a client stays out of the client's decision. A lighter-in-the-pocket servitor leaves other people's lighters alone. No fence, and the whole world is the job.

Be dull. Be specific. "No harm to any person" is a start, and then you add the exact thing you are worried about.

4. Feeding

It needs something to run on. Pick one fuel.

Attention: a few minutes of notice each day.
A ritual action: one small act, the same each time. Light a candle, tap a card.
A schedule: a fixed slot each week.

Pick the one you'll keep, and write down how often, so you notice the day you stop.

A servitor nobody feeds starves. That is the gentlest way for one to end, and it is still an ending you didn't choose.

5. Form

Describe a form, or let it pick its own. I let mine choose.

You don't have to picture anything. If you do describe one, keep it plain and keep it non-human, and skip any face you would hate to meet in a hallway.

6. The off switch

Last on the card, and mandatory. Write an end date or a condition that ends it.

Then write the plain words you will use to dissolve it, something like "Thank it out loud, stop feeding it, and say it is finished." Plain is enough.

The Bench will not print a charter with this field blank.

When the date comes, do what you wrote. Exactly that.

Renewing it by reflex is how you end up with one you buried. If the job still needs doing, write a new charter with a new end date and decide it fresh.

Neglect is what goes wrong

Somebody builds one on a night they are fired up and feeds it every morning for a week. Then they get busy. They miss a day, then a month.

They forget the name. They never wrote the end date down.

Weeks later they describe a low drag on everything and can't say where it comes from. A door that sticks. A task that keeps slipping.

If it's yours, find the charter. End it out loud, by name.

If you never wrote one, write it now for the thing you are thinking of, then dissolve it properly.

Any time this makes your sleep or your mood worse, stop, and talk to a person.

The Bench does the paperwork

Six short screens, one card at the end, and a calendar file for the end date that says nothing about the job. It runs in your browser and nothing you type leaves it.

Now do it: open the Servitor Bench.

How to build a servitor