papa-hq reads 01 research -> 03 decision -> 02 design. The order is a scar, not a choice: 02-DESIGN existed from its initial commit, and when adr/ was finally promoted on 2026-07-13 it took the next free number rather than its place in the sequence. By then design was too settled to renumber. hal-hq was three commits old, so it is not. adr/ becomes 02-DECISIONS and 02-DESIGN becomes 03-DESIGN, and following the folder numbers now walks the process in the order it happens: research produces a decision, the decision authorises a design. 00-GENESIS becomes 00-META, matching papa's rename from the same restructure. Every path reference rewritten across documents, frontmatter, playbooks and skills. All links resolve; all 58 frontmatter blocks parse and their path fields still point at files that exist.
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Playbook 01 — Research
Trigger. An idea, technology or approach worth investigating before it is committed to design. Also: an as-is document that raises a question nobody can answer.
Who runs it. Anyone.
Steps
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Take the next free number: highest
01-RESEARCH/NNN-*plus one, zero-padded to three digits. Never skip or reuse a number. -
Create
01-RESEARCH/NNN-descriptive-name/and a00-overview.mdin it carrying:--- status: active initiated: YYYY-MM-DD touches: [] # areas, subsystems or as-is design docs the effort bears on ---Then a short prose summary: what is being investigated, why, and what it touches.
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Do the research in further documents in the same folder — notes, option analyses, evidence, draft designs. Anything goes. Keep the summary in
00-overview.mdcurrent as the effort changes shape.
What makes research worth reading
State evidence, not assertion. "Zero of 124 modules declare brain as a dependency"
outranks "the dependency rule is not followed". 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 — a node publicly named but behind a household NAT carries the whole lesson without naming anything.
Do not
- Do not put status in prose. It lives in
00-overview.md's frontmatter, and the prose must not restate it. - Do not set
became:while the effort is open — playbook 02 sets it at closure. - Do not write into
03-DESIGNfrom an open effort.
Closing
An effort never just stops. It closes through playbook 02 as graduated
or abandoned, always with became: pointing at what it turned into. Nothing is deleted —
what was rejected, and why, is the more expensive half to rediscover.