jschoubben
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papa-hq has no ledger. Its root is AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, README.md, every decision is a numbered record, and its graduation playbook has no path for an unrecorded decision. hal-hq now matches. The ledger's 41 entries classified as: 10 restating a record, 11 restating design docs, 15 describing how this repository works with the reasoning sitting in a README rather than anywhere citable, 3 small rules with no home, 2 superseded stubs. Mostly a copy — and a hand-maintained index, the exact pattern ADR 0022 had just rejected for the decision index on the grounds it drifted after one addition. Keeping one copy of that while removing another is not a position. It also collided by name with 02-DECISIONS/ in any directory listing. Nothing was dropped. Records 0019-0025 give the repository decisions the reasoning they never had: HQ is its own repository and is public, design has two layers, work moves through playbooks, status lives in frontmatter, issues have a front door, the numbering is the flow, HQ is the source of the constitution. 0026 records the ledger's own removal. The three orphan rules went to how-we-build, where a rule is enforced and keeps the incident that earned it — the package rule was genuinely unwritten anywhere. Two lab decisions stated only in the ledger went into the lab design. "Deliberately not decided" went to the research effort and design document each question actually belongs to. The chronological view the ledger provided is now generated from record frontmatter, which is what it was for. The cost, stated in 0026 rather than glossed: a record is more work than a table row, so the risk is a small decision going unrecorded because nobody wanted to write a document. how-we-build takes rules cheaply, which is the mitigation, not a solution.
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Playbook 02 — Graduation and design change
Trigger. A research effort concludes, or an existing design must change.
Who runs it. Anyone, with the decision recorded before the design moves.
Graduating research
-
Check it against GENESIS. An effort graduates only if its conclusion is traceable to
mission.md,context.mdandeffect.md. If it conflicts, either the effort is wrong or GENESIS is — say which, in writing, before proceeding. -
Record the decision. Write a record in
02-DECISIONS/taking the next free number. Format and rules are in02-DECISIONS/README.md. State evidence, not assertion, and record the options that were rejected — that is the half worth keeping. -
Write the design. Create the document under
03-DESIGN/01-to-be/with frontmatter:--- layer: to-be status: designed code: [] # owning code repo(s); set at build handoff, empty before updated: YYYY-MM-DD decisions: [02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md] --- -
Close the effort. Set the effort's
00-overview.mdfrontmatter tostatus: graduatedandbecame:pointing at the design document and the decision record.
Amending an existing design
A design changes only through a decision.
- Write the decision record. If it reverses an earlier one, the earlier record's
status:becomessuperseded-by: 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md— its text is never edited. - Edit the to-be design document and set
updated:to today. - If the amendment came from an issue, set that issue's
amended-design:to the document path.
When something ships
Implementation state is a third axis, independent of both design and decision.
- Write or update the matching document under
03-DESIGN/00-as-is/so it describes what now runs — including anything that shipped differently from the intent. A design that shipped bent is an as-is fact, not a design amendment. - Set the to-be document's
status: implementedand itscode:to the owning repositories fromrepos.md. status: implementedmust be defensible from the owning repository's main branch, not from intent. If it cannot be checked, it isin-progress.
Do not
- Do not move a to-be document into
00-as-is/. Write the as-is document; both stand. - Do not edit an as-is document to describe an intention. That is what the to-be layer is for.
- Do not change a decision record's meaning. Supersede it.