jschoubben
3f6d939930
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repository works with the reasoning sitting in a README rather than anywhere citable, 3 small rules with no home, 2 superseded stubs.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.
68 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
68 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
# 02-DECISIONS
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Architecture decision records — the "why" trail behind the rules in
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[`00-META`](../00-META/) and the specifications in [`03-DESIGN`](../03-DESIGN/).
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**Numbered `02` because a decision precedes the design it authorises.** Research concludes,
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the decision is recorded here, and only then is the design written. Following the folder
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numbers walks the process in the order it happens.
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One file per decision, numbered, never deleted. A superseded record has its `status:` changed
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and gains a pointer to what replaced it — **its text is never edited**. The reasoning that was
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rejected is the expensive half to rediscover.
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The records run in the order the decisions were taken, oldest first.
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**Every decision is a record.** There is no ledger and no index file — if a decision is worth
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recording it is worth a record, and if it is not worth a record it is not recorded
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([ADR 0026](0026-every-decision-is-a-record.md)). A "decision" small enough to be one line is
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almost always a **rule**, and a rule belongs in
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[`00-META/how-we-build.md`](../00-META/how-we-build.md), where it is enforced and keeps the
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incident that earned it.
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## Frontmatter
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```yaml
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---
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status: proposed | accepted | superseded
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date: YYYY-MM-DD # when the decision was taken, not when it was written down
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deciders: name
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reconstructed: true|false # true when the record was written after the fact from evidence
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superseded-by: # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when status is superseded
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extends: # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when this record widens an earlier one
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---
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```
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## Body
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```
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# N. Title in plain language
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## Context what was true, with evidence
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## Considered Options numbered, each with why it was rejected
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## Decision what was decided
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## Consequences what follows, including what got harder
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## References commits, pull requests, knowledge-base entries, prior art
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```
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State evidence, not assertion. *"Zero of 124 modules declare `brain` as a dependency"*
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outranks *"the dependency rule is not followed"*.
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## Reconstructed records
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Records 0001–0014 were written on 2026-08-23, after the decisions they describe. Records 0015 onward were taken as records. Those
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decisions were taken in implementation rather than in a document; the records state what was
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decided and the evidence it was decided from, and each carries `reconstructed: true` and says
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so in its first lines.
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A reconstructed record is not a transcript. Where the deliberation is not recoverable, the
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options section states what the alternatives were and why the chosen one won on the evidence
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available — not a discussion that did not happen. Where a date is not establishable it says so
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rather than guessing.
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## Index
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The index is **generated, not maintained** — run the `hal-status` skill, which reads the
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frontmatter of every record. A hand-written index drifts from the folder it describes, and
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this one had already done so after a single addition.
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