Files
hq/01-RESEARCH
jochen f515d8b6b2
mesh/merge-gate pass: the change touches no module of the mesh's graph
mesh/repo-check pass: its merge-check.sh passed
mesh/delivery superseded: a newer head of the same pull request
Close twelve research efforts their decisions already settled (issue 408)
Ten graduated and two abandoned efforts still said active, so the record
read as open questions that later ADRs and designs had answered. Each now
names in became: what decided or overtook it. To-be 45's undecided item
moves from research 017 to issue 409, and research 037's shell follow-up
is issue 410.
2026-10-10 21:43:53 +02:00
..

01-RESEARCH

Investigations that have not yet hardened into design.

Structure

Each effort lives in NNN-descriptive-name/ and must contain 00-overview.md, carrying its state in YAML frontmatter and a prose summary below it:

---
status: active | graduated | abandoned
initiated: YYYY-MM-DD
touches: []          # design docs, subsystems or areas the effort bears on
became: []           # required when status is terminal — what it turned into
---

The prose says what is being investigated, why, and what it touches. It does not restate the status — status lives in one place, and two places is one too many.

Further documents in the same folder hold the work itself: notes, evidence, option analyses, draft designs.

Lifecycle

status Meaning
active Investigation in progress.
graduated Checked against 00-META, decided in 02-DECISIONS/, and specified in 03-DESIGN — see became:.
abandoned Stopped or superseded. Nothing is deleted.

An effort graduates by producing a decision record and a 03-DESIGN entry. It is abandoned in place — never deleted. What was rejected, and why, is the more expensive half to rediscover.

Starting and closing efforts is playbook territory: 00-META/process/01-research.md and 02-graduation.md.

Rules

  • Markdown only. Do not skip or reuse a sequence number.
  • Evidence, not assertion. 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.