Files
hq/03-DESIGN
jschoubben da83f29f47 Give milestone G its own part of design 47, and answer its builders' open questions there
G's builders read a 443 KB design by searching it and filled what they did not find; playbook 02's shape gives
each milestone a part read whole. G's lines move whole into 47-milestones/G.md, numbered as design lines, and
the questions G's prepare and develop met within the records are written as the design's own choices
(the operator, 2026-11-10: small design choices are the design's, only architectural ones are asked).
The size bounds are bent for this split on the lead's word; research 087 takes them up.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01JG73KK8HD1gufnqyFxMFdW
2026-11-11 02:06:46 +01:00
..

03-DESIGN

The authoritative specification. Implementation is built against what is written here.

Two layers

Folder What it is
00-as-is/ The mesh that exists today. Shipped behaviour, described as it is — including behaviour nobody would choose again.
01-to-be/ The mesh being built toward. Every statement traceable to a decision record in the knowledge base (ADR 0290).

They are never mixed. A statement about the future does not belong in an as-is document, and an as-is document is never edited to describe an intention.

When a to-be design ships, it does not move. Its as-is counterpart is written or updated, the to-be document's status becomes implemented, and both stand — one describing what runs, the other recording what was intended. Deleting the intention loses the reasoning, which is the expensive half.

Frontmatter

Every design document (not the READMEs) carries:

---
layer: as-is | to-be
status: designed | in-progress | implemented | abandoned
code: []                 # owning code repo(s), from 00-META/repos.md
updated: YYYY-MM-DD      # date of the last status change, not of text edits
decisions: []            # the decision records this document rests on, each "ADR NNNN"
---

For an as-is document, status: implemented is the normal state — it describes something that runs — and code: names where that implementation lives.

Status changes when implementation state changes, never because design text was edited. An implemented claim must be defensible from the owning repository's main branch, not from intent. If it cannot be checked, it is in-progress.

Cross-cutting views are generated from this frontmatter by the hq-status skill and never written to disk.

What belongs here

Functional analysis, architectural description, and specification — prose and diagrams only, no code. A manifest field may be named; a manifest may not be pasted. A document enters the to-be layer only after the decision behind it is recorded in the knowledge base and the research that produced it is closed.

Subfolders are encouraged where a layer grows enough to need them.