Files
hq/02-DECISIONS
jschoubben c557f99cba Record what testing podman actually showed
0060 said the container runtime was a separate decision. It is now made, and
the reasoning is worth keeping because it is the opposite answer to the same
question one paragraph earlier.

Abstracting service managers is lossy -- systemd and OpenRC are different
models and LoadState has no equivalent. Container runtimes converged on one CLI
deliberately, so almost nothing is lost: checked against podman 6.1.0, run,
rm -f and docker's own template syntax for state and labels all work unchanged.
Only the probe differs. So: a two-entry lookup, not an interface.

The difference that is NOT in the CLI is the one that would have shipped
silently. Podman accepts --restart unless-stopped, records it, and has no
daemon to act on it -- containers do not return after a reboot unless
podman-restart.service is enabled, which by default it is not. Every command
reports success and the effect does not happen.

That belongs in the declaration rather than the host: a node using podman is
told to enable the unit. Which is what made the service shape's missing 'boot'
field visible, and it is now built.
2026-08-27 23:59:05 +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 A superseded record has its status: changed and gains a pointer to what replaced it — its text is never edited.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status: proposed | accepted | superseded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superseded-by:            # 02-DECISIONS/NNNN-....md, when status is superseded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.