Decided after measuring what renumbering actually costs: 96 references in code
comments across two repositories, none of which would have failed to compile.
They would have pointed at the wrong reasoning, which is worse than a broken
link because nothing reports it.
So a number identifies a record and never changes. It cannot also be a
position -- a position moves when the set changes, and an identity that moves
is not one.
The reading order moves into an index generated from each record's `topic:`.
Six topics, in the order somebody learns the system.
The index is WRITTEN rather than only generated on demand, which reverses what
this repository previously said. The reason it said otherwise is that a
hand-written index drifts -- but a reader looking at the folder on a forge sees
the folder, not a command, and the drift objection is answered by checking
rather than by refusing to write one. That is §5's own rule: a rule states how
it is checked.
Two checks, both confirmed to bite. index.py fails when the written order no
longer matches the records. records.py fails when a record has no topic or one
nobody defined -- the quiet failure being a record that vanishes from the order
rather than appearing in the wrong place.
Jochen asked whether the order made sense. It did not -- it followed when
things happened to be decided, which after consolidation is fictional anyway
since record 5 alone folds decisions taken across a week.
Concretely wrong before: the domain statement sat at 8, after five engineering
rules; the constitution was scattered across 5, 12 and 17; the tiers landed at
15, 16, 21 and 22 with process records in between.
Now it walks: what the mesh is (1-3), its tiers from the bottom up (4-8), what
runs on them and how it gets there (9-10), how it is built (11-16), how it is
checked (17-18), how we work (19-23).
Two things made this safe rather than free. It is a permutation, not a
compaction, so the renames go through temporary names -- otherwise two files
want one slot and one is lost. And the reference rewrite is a single
simultaneous pass, because almost every number moved into a slot another number
was vacating; replacing one at a time would have cascaded and pointed things at
the wrong record while still resolving.
Verified: 284 [ADR NNNN](path) links across the repository, all with matching
text and target.
The ordering principle is now stated in 19 rather than left implicit -- the
repository already said "the numbering is the flow" about its folders, and
there was no reason for the records to be the exception.
jschoubben