# 01-RESEARCH

Investigations that have not yet hardened into design.

## Structure

Each effort lives in `NNN-descriptive-name/` and **must** contain `00-overview.md`, carrying its
state in YAML frontmatter and a prose summary below it:

```yaml
---
status: active | graduated | abandoned
initiated: YYYY-MM-DD
touches: []          # design docs, subsystems or areas the effort bears on
became: []           # required when status is terminal — what it turned into
---
```

The prose says what is being investigated, why, and what it touches. It does not restate the
status — status lives in one place, and two places is one too many.

Further documents in the same folder hold the work itself: notes, evidence, option analyses,
draft designs.

## Lifecycle

| status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `active` | Investigation in progress. |
| `graduated` | Checked against `00-META`, decided in `02-DECISIONS/`, and specified in `03-DESIGN` — see `became:`. |
| `abandoned` | Stopped or superseded. Nothing is deleted. |

An effort graduates by producing a decision record **and** a `03-DESIGN` entry. It is abandoned
in place — never deleted. What was rejected, and why, is the more expensive half to
rediscover.

Starting and closing efforts is playbook territory:
[`00-META/process/01-research.md`](../00-META/process/01-research.md) and
[`02-graduation.md`](../00-META/process/02-graduation.md).

## Rules

- Markdown only. Do not skip or reuse a sequence number.
- **Evidence, not assertion.** An effort that measured nothing has not finished.
- Research describes real observations but **never identifies the mesh it observed**. The shape
  of a finding survives anonymisation intact.