Architecture Binder Of Record

Own binder truth: is this multi-document product-architecture binder internally consistent, complete against its stated universe, and honest about shipped, partial, speculative, or blocked status — including the ambitions it inherited from before the binder existed.

Use This For

• Deciding whether a chapter's claimed capability is real: owner assigned, acceptance gate named, evidence linked — not just confident prose.
• Running a periodic ambition-archaeology sweep that classifies every old product promise (absorbed/superseded/deferred/contradicted/orphaned/rejected) instead of letting it rot unaddressed.
• Tracking cross-chapter contradictions (term, authority, schema, shipped-vs-target) to resolution instead of letting two chapters quietly disagree.
• Checking the three coverage axes (customer/deployment type, technical contingency, architecture consistency) for gaps before an implementation chain cites the binder as ready.
• Writing the mandatory append-only binder-aor-log: ledger entry every run, including a run that finds nothing.

Do Not Use This For

• Auditing a single Claude Skill bundle's structure, frontmatter, or file hygiene (skill-hygiene).
• Rendering a single-PM accept/reject verdict on one finished deliverable (port-daddy-user-surrogate-pm-review).
• Sequencing or stewarding a roadmap's sidequests once a gap or operator decision has been surfaced (legible-roadmap-with-sidequests).

Reconcile Loop

flowchart TD
  A[Read last binder-aor-log entry] --> B[Scan changed chapters + source corpus since]
  B --> C{Cross-chapter contradiction found?}
  C -->|Yes, unresolved| D[Flag unresolved-contradiction, tier per severity]
  C -->|No| E[Check each claimed capability]
  D --> E
  E --> F{owner + gate + evidence all present?}
  F -->|No| G[Flag capability-without-owner-gate-evidence]
  F -->|Yes| H[Run/continue ambition-archaeology sweep]
  G --> H
  H --> I{Every ambition classified?}
  I -->|No| J[Flag ambition-unclassified]
  I -->|Yes| K[Check the three coverage-matrix axes]
  J --> K
  K --> L{All 3 axes complete?}
  L -->|No| M[Flag coverage-axis-incomplete]
  L -->|Yes| N[Escalate per tier + write binder-aor-log entry]
  M --> N

1. Read the previous binder-aor-log: note and reconcile from its window end, not a fixed time window — absence of a prior entry means start from the beginning.
2. Scan what changed since: binder chapters, open PRs touching runtime/binder surfaces, and recent notes mentioning the product's core nouns.
3. Classify every cross-chapter contradiction as term, authority, schema, or shipped-vs-target, and mark it resolved only once a source-linked fix has landed — never by assumption.
4. Verify every claimed capability carries an accountable owner, a testable acceptance gate, and a link to real evidence (PR, transcript, screenshot, test run). Prose with no proof is not coverage.
5. Run or continue the ambition-archaeology sweep: classify every entry in the older ambition corpus (website, plans, examples, ADRs, idea troves) as absorbed, superseded, deferred, contradicted, orphaned, or rejected — see references/ambition-archaeology-classification.md.
6. Update the three coverage matrices (customer/deployment, technical contingency, architecture consistency) and escalate per tier — record, block a section, or request an operator decision. See references/raci-authority-and-escalation.md.
7. Write the mandatory binder-aor-log: ledger entry — confidence, findings, gates changed, handover — even when the run finds nothing. Absence of an entry is itself a finding for the next run.

Output Contract

A binder-coverage-spec that scripts/binder_coverage_audit.mjs reads carries:

• documents[]: every binder document in scope, each with claimedCapabilities[] — { name, owner?, gate?, evidenceLink? }.
• contradictions[]: every cross-chapter disagreement found — { kind: 'term'|'authority'|'schema'|'shipped-vs-target', resolved: boolean }.
• ambitionCorpus[]: every older ambition family being reconciled — { name, classification: 'absorbed'|'superseded'|'deferred'|'contradicted'|'orphaned'|'rejected'|null }.
• coverageMatrix: { customerAxisComplete, contingencyAxisComplete, architectureAxisComplete } — three booleans, each true only when every row on that axis has an owner, status, gate, failure mode, recovery path, and source.

Use scripts/binder_coverage_audit.mjs to audit a binder-coverage-spec JSON and return { pass, score, findings, recommendations }, including a binder-aor-log:-style summary line in recommendations on every run.

Anti-Patterns

Capability Claimed Without Proof

Novice: A chapter states "supports Work Intent as the sole launch primitive" with no owner, no acceptance gate, and no evidence link — the claim exists only as prose. Expert: A claimed capability is not covered until it names an accountable owner, a testable acceptance gate, and a link to the evidence that proves it actually shipped and works. Detection: binder_coverage_audit.mjs fires capability-without-owner-gate-evidence (critical) when any claimed capability is missing owner, gate, or evidenceLink.

Ambition Amnesia

Novice: An old public promise — a marketplace story, a pricing model, a named platform surface — quietly disappears from the corpus with no record of what happened to it. Expert: Every entry in the ambition corpus gets one of six classifications (absorbed, superseded, deferred, contradicted, orphaned, rejected) with a rationale and a destination; "we forgot about it" is never a valid resting state. Detection: binder_coverage_audit.mjs fires ambition-unclassified (critical) when any ambitionCorpus item has classification: null.

Coverage Theater

Novice: The binder is declared "complete" while two chapters still contradict each other, or a whole coverage axis (customer, contingency, or architecture) has never been checked. Expert: Completeness is a positive, provable claim — zero unresolved contradictions AND all three coverage axes complete — never "nothing is currently flagged as broken." Detection: binder_coverage_audit.mjs fires unresolved-contradiction (critical) for any contradiction with resolved:false, and coverage-axis-incomplete (critical) for any of customerAxisComplete / contingencyAxisComplete / architectureAxisComplete that is not true.

References

File	Load When
references/raci-authority-and-escalation.md	Need to know who is Accountable for a concern, what the Architect of Record may/may not do unilaterally, or which escalation tier a finding belongs to.
references/ambition-archaeology-classification.md	Need to classify an entry in the older ambition corpus, or need the required shape of a completed sweep.
examples/expected-output.md	Need to see an incomplete binder audited, then the same binder fixed and passing.
templates/output-template.md	Need a reusable run template: contradiction list, coverage matrix update, ambition table, and the mandatory ledger entry.
schemas/binder-coverage-spec.schema.json	Need to validate a binder-coverage-spec JSON payload's structure before auditing it.
scripts/binder_coverage_audit.mjs	Need deterministic scoring of a binder's completeness and consistency.
agents/openai.yaml	Need a subagent descriptor for a delegated Architect of Record run.

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Skill Bundle Index

Every file in this skill, and when to open it. Auto-generated; run scripts/index_references.py --fix.

root

• CHANGELOG.md — Architecture Binder Of Record — Changelog — - Initial skill creation - Reconcile-loop process, RACI/authority/escalation reference, and ambition-archaeology classification reference de
• README.md — Architecture Binder Of Record — Own whether a multi-document product-architecture binder is internally consistent, complete against its stated coverage universe, and honest

agents/

• agents/openai.yaml — openai (data/schema)

examples/

• examples/expected-output.md — Example Output: Architecture Binder Of Record — Scenario: a binder run claims a chapter's headline capability ("Work Intent is the sole launch primitive") with an owner but no acceptance g
• examples/sample-input.json — sample input (data/schema)

references/

• references/ambition-archaeology-classification.md — Ambition Archaeology Classification — Use this when you need to classify an older public or internal product promise against the current binder, or when you're writing the ambiti
• references/raci-authority-and-escalation.md — RACI, Authority, And Escalation — Use this when you need to know who is Accountable for a specific binder concern, what the Architect of Record may and may not do unilaterall

schemas/

• schemas/binder-coverage-spec.schema.json — binder coverage spec.schema (data/schema)

scripts/

• scripts/binder_coverage_audit.mjs

templates/

• templates/output-template.md — Binder Architect Of Record — Run Template — Fill in every section before closing a run.

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