Files
hq/02-DECISIONS
jschoubben 66df0eb53e 0061: the launcher supervises; init is asked for one thing
The record said an init is asked for two things -- start at boot and restart on
exit -- which was half a change. It moved the give-up logic out of unit files
and left the restart in one, so init still decided when the host came back.

The launcher no longer execs the host. It supervises it, so restarting is ours
too, and init is asked only to run it at boot. There is an OpenRC script beside
the systemd unit now.

Records the cost honestly: not exec'ing means the launcher must trap the
shutdown signal and pass it down, because a supervisor that exits while its
child runs leaves the host to be killed rather than to stop.

And records what the implementation found: the counter counts consecutive
FAILURES, not starts. Counting starts meant a host that upgraded itself three
times rolled itself back, having worked perfectly every time -- because a clean
exit IS the upgrade path. That is now the second time a clean exit has been
mishandled, so it is called out as the thing to check.
2026-08-28 00:38:18 +02:00
..

02-DECISIONS

Architecture decision records — the "why" trail behind the rules in 00-META and the specifications in 03-DESIGN.

Numbered 02 because a decision precedes the design it authorises. Research concludes, the decision is recorded here, and only then is the design written. Following the folder numbers walks the process in the order it happens.

One file per decision, numbered, never deleted. A superseded record has its status: changed and gains a pointer to what replaced it — its text is never edited. The reasoning that was rejected is the expensive half to rediscover.

The records run in the order the decisions were taken, oldest first.

Every decision is a record. There is no ledger and no index file — if a decision is worth recording it is worth a record, and if it is not worth a record it is not recorded (ADR 0026). A "decision" small enough to be one line is almost always a rule, and a rule belongs in 00-META/how-we-build.md, where it is enforced and keeps the incident that earned it.

Frontmatter

---
status: proposed | accepted | superseded
date: YYYY-MM-DD          # when the decision was taken, not when it was written down
deciders: name
reconstructed: true|false # true when the record was written after the fact from evidence
superseded-by:            # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when status is superseded
extends:                  # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when this record widens an earlier one
---

Body

# N. Title in plain language

## Context            what was true, with evidence
## Considered Options numbered, each with why it was rejected
## Decision           what was decided
## Consequences       what follows, including what got harder
## References         commits, pull requests, knowledge-base entries, prior art

State evidence, not assertion. "Zero of 124 modules declare brain as a dependency" outranks "the dependency rule is not followed".

Reconstructed records

Records 0001–0014 were written on 2026-08-23, after the decisions they describe. Records 0015 onward were taken as records. Those decisions were taken in implementation rather than in a document; the records state what was decided and the evidence it was decided from, and each carries reconstructed: true and says so in its first lines.

A reconstructed record is not a transcript. Where the deliberation is not recoverable, the options section states what the alternatives were and why the chosen one won on the evidence available — not a discussion that did not happen. Where a date is not establishable it says so rather than guessing.

Index

The index is generated, not maintained — run the hq-status skill, which reads the frontmatter of every record. A hand-written index drifts from the folder it describes, and this one had already done so after a single addition.