Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jschoubben 05b16d63bb Answer develop's fourth batch of questions on milestone G, and write the operator's words for the teller
Develop met questions the design did not answer on restore points, a bundle's
channel to the tool runner, the want's new fields, the finding stream's form
under ADR 0595 and ADR 0666, and per-branch views; each is now a design line
(G-12, §516 to §541) with its reason and check, so develop builds them and
decides nothing.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JG73KEq4zoDfM9WtYpcQgZ
2026-11-11 12:38:56 +01:00
..

03-DESIGN

The authoritative specification. Implementation is built against what is written here.

Two layers

Folder What it is
00-as-is/ The mesh that exists today. Shipped behaviour, described as it is — including behaviour nobody would choose again.
01-to-be/ The mesh being built toward. Every statement traceable to a decision record in the knowledge base (ADR 0290).

They are never mixed. A statement about the future does not belong in an as-is document, and an as-is document is never edited to describe an intention.

When a to-be design ships, it does not move. Its as-is counterpart is written or updated, the to-be document's status becomes implemented, and both stand — one describing what runs, the other recording what was intended. Deleting the intention loses the reasoning, which is the expensive half.

Frontmatter

Every design document (not the READMEs) carries:

---
layer: as-is | to-be
status: designed | in-progress | implemented | abandoned
code: []                 # owning code repo(s), from 00-META/repos.md
updated: YYYY-MM-DD      # date of the last status change, not of text edits
decisions: []            # the decision records this document rests on, each "ADR NNNN"
---

For an as-is document, status: implemented is the normal state — it describes something that runs — and code: names where that implementation lives.

Status changes when implementation state changes, never because design text was edited. An implemented claim must be defensible from the owning repository's main branch, not from intent. If it cannot be checked, it is in-progress.

Cross-cutting views are generated from this frontmatter by the hq-status skill and never written to disk.

What belongs here

Functional analysis, architectural description, and specification — prose and diagrams only, no code. A manifest field may be named; a manifest may not be pasted. A document enters the to-be layer only after the decision behind it is recorded in the knowledge base and the research that produced it is closed.

Subfolders are encouraged where a layer grows enough to need them.