ADR

Architectural Decision Records — minimal, dated, sequentially numbered. The point is recording that a decision was made and why, not filling out template sections.

Pattern adapted from mattpocock/skills (grill-with-docs/ADR-FORMAT.md).

Step 0 — Resolve company + scope

$ARGUMENTS may include:

• [company] slug — fall back to manifest / handoff / cwd inference if absent
• [repo|hq] scope — pick home directory
• <one-line decision summary> — used as title and slug seed

If scope is ambiguous, ask via AskUserQuestion:

Choice	Home	When
repo	<repo>/docs/adr/	Decision is bound to specific code; reviewers will read it alongside the code
hq	companies/{co}/knowledge/adrs/	Decision is org-level (e.g. "we use Linear, not Jira"; "all auth via Cognito")

If no company resolves and scope is hq, default to core/knowledge/public/adrs/ (rare — most ADRs have a tenant).

Step 1 — Three-condition gate (HARD BLOCK)

Ask the user three yes/no questions via a single AskUserQuestion call:

1. Hard to reverse — would changing your mind later cost meaningful effort? (refactor, migration, contract renegotiation)
2. Surprising without context — would a future reader look at the result and wonder "why on earth did they do it this way?"
3. Result of a real trade-off — were there genuine alternatives, and did you pick this one for specific reasons?

If any answer is no → DO NOT WRITE THE ADR. Offer alternatives:

Failed condition	Alternative
Easy to reverse	Skip — you'll just reverse it later
Not surprising	Skip — nobody will wonder
No real trade-off	Add to GLOSSARY.md glossary instead, or skip

Re-prompt: "Skip ADR / Add to GLOSSARY.md / Force-write anyway (rarely correct)". Only Force-write proceeds; record reasoning in the ADR body so the override is explicit.

Step 2 — Locate or create target directory

# repo scope
mkdir -p <repo>/docs/adr/

# hq scope
mkdir -p companies/{co}/knowledge/adrs/

Lazy-create only when the first ADR is needed.

Step 3 — Compute next number

ls <target>/[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]-*.md 2>/dev/null \
  | sed 's|.*/\([0-9]*\)-.*|\1|' \
  | sort -n \
  | tail -1

Increment by 1. Default to 0001 if no existing ADRs. Format: NNNN (4-digit zero-padded).

Slug from the user's title:

• Lowercase
• Spaces / underscores → -
• Strip non-alphanumeric except -
• Cap at 60 chars

Final filename: NNNN-slug.md

Step 4 — Walk the user through 1–3 sentences

Single AskUserQuestion (or sequential prompts) collecting:

• Title — short noun phrase, sentence case, ≤60 chars
• Body — 1–3 sentences answering: what's the context, what did we decide, why this over alternatives

That's the minimum. The value is in recording the decision, not in completing a template.

Step 5 — Optional sections (offer, don't force)

Ask via AskUserQuestion (multiSelect) which (if any) to include:

• Status frontmatter (proposed | accepted | deprecated | superseded by ADR-NNNN) — useful when decisions are likely to be revisited
• Considered Options — only when rejected alternatives are worth remembering
• Consequences — only when non-obvious downstream effects need calling out

If user picks none, the ADR is just title + 1–3 sentences. Good.

Step 6 — Write ADR

Template (use only the sections selected in Step 5):

---
status: <accepted|proposed|...>          # only if Status was selected
date: <YYYY-MM-DD>
related: []                              # ADR numbers, optional
---

# <Title>

<1-3 sentences: context, decision, why.>

## Considered Options                    <!-- optional -->

- <Option A> — <why rejected>
- <Option B> — <why rejected>

## Consequences                          <!-- optional -->

- <non-obvious downstream effect>

Step 7 — Cross-link

If new domain terms surfaced during the conversation, offer to update GLOSSARY.md (in the same repo for repo scope; in companies/{co}/knowledge/GLOSSARY.md for hq scope).

If this ADR supersedes an earlier one, update the older ADR's frontmatter to status: superseded by ADR-NNNN (after asking).

If this ADR is accepting a /architect candidate, add a backlink in workspace/reports/{slug}-architect.md under that candidate's "Outcome" section.

Step 8 — Report

Print:

✓ ADR written: <target>/NNNN-slug.md
  Title: <title>
  Scope: repo | hq
  Optional sections: <Status / Considered Options / Consequences / none>
  GLOSSARY.md updated: yes / no
  Supersedes: ADR-MMMM / none

What qualifies (examples)

• Architectural shape. "We're using a monorepo." "Write model is event-sourced; read model projects to Postgres."
• Integration patterns between contexts. "Ordering and Billing communicate via domain events, not synchronous HTTP."
• Technology choices that carry lock-in. Database, message bus, auth provider, deployment target. Not every library — just the ones that would take a quarter to swap out.
• Boundary and scope decisions. "Customer data is owned by the Customer context; other contexts reference it by ID only." Explicit no-s are as valuable as the yes-s.
• Deliberate deviations from the obvious path. "We're using manual SQL instead of an ORM because X." Anything where a reasonable reader would assume the opposite. Stops the next engineer from "fixing" something deliberate.
• Constraints not visible in the code. "We can't use AWS because of compliance requirements." "Response times must be under 200ms because of the partner API contract."
• Rejected alternatives when the rejection is non-obvious. Considered GraphQL, picked REST for subtle reasons → record it, otherwise someone will suggest GraphQL again in six months.

What does NOT qualify

• Library choices that are easy to swap (date formatter, test runner version, lint rule preference)
• Naming decisions ("we call this thing the X intake") → these go in GLOSSARY.md, not an ADR
• Implementation details that the code itself makes obvious
• Decisions you're already going to revisit next sprint (use a TODO comment)
• "We did the obvious thing" — there's nothing to record

Cross-references

• /out-of-scope — sibling skill for rejected feature requests (vs. this for accepted technical decisions).
• /brainstorm, /prd, /architect, /diagnose — all hand off here when a decision warrants ADR.
• HQ /learn — for cross-tenant knowledge capture (different from per-repo / per-company ADR).
• Pattern source: mattpocock/skills grill-with-docs/ADR-FORMAT.md.