Madhura68
8a7d419972
Set up docs/adr/ as the canonical home for architecture decisions: - templates/nygard.md — default four-section format (Status, Context, Decision, Consequences) for one-way-door decisions. - templates/madr.md — MADR v4 with YAML front-matter and explicit Considered Options for decisions where rejected alternatives matter. - README.md — naming convention (NNNN-kebab-case), template-selection guidance (Nygard default; MADR for auth, queue mechanics, agent integration), status lifecycle, and ADR roster. - 0000-record-architecture-decisions.md — meta-ADR establishing the practice itself, in Nygard format. Backfilling existing implicit decisions (base-ui-over-radix, float sort_order, demo-user three-layer policy, etc.) is fase 6 of the docs-restructure plan.
2.9 KiB
ADR-0000: Record architecture decisions
Status
accepted
Context
Scrum4Me makes several non-obvious architectural choices that aren't visible
from the code alone — for example, why we use @base-ui/react rather than
Radix, why drag-and-drop ordering uses float sort_order instead of integer
positions, why authentication runs on iron-session rather than NextAuth,
and why the demo-user policy is enforced in three layers. These decisions
are scattered across CLAUDE.md, individual pattern docs, plan files, and
commit messages. New contributors and AI agents working on the codebase
have no fast path to the why, which leads to one of two failure modes:
they either re-litigate decisions that were already settled, or they make
changes that violate constraints they didn't know about.
We want a single, predictable place to record significant architectural choices, with enough context that a reader six months from now can decide whether the decision still holds.
Decision
We adopt Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) as the canonical format for
documenting significant architectural choices in this codebase. ADRs live
in docs/adr/, are numbered sequentially with a four-digit prefix
(0001-...md, 0002-...md, …), and follow one of two templates:
- Nygard (
templates/nygard.md) — default, for one-way-door decisions with a clear motivating context. - MADR v4 (
templates/madr.md) — for decisions where weighing multiple alternatives is part of the value the record provides (auth, queue mechanics, agent integration).
The full conventions — file naming, status lifecycle, template selection
guidance — are documented in README.md.
ADRs are immutable once accepted: course corrections create a new ADR that supersedes the old one rather than editing the original.
Consequences
Positive
- Architectural choices have a single, predictable home that an AI agent
or new contributor can find with one
ls docs/adr/. - The "why" of each decision is captured at the moment it's made, when the context is fresh, rather than reconstructed later from commits.
- Superseded decisions remain readable, so future contributors can see the history of a choice without git archaeology.
- The format scales: writing an ADR is a 15-minute activity for the default Nygard template, low enough overhead to be worth doing every time.
Negative
- Adds a small ritual to every significant architectural decision — easy to skip when moving fast, leading to a stale or incomplete record if not enforced through review.
- Backfilling existing decisions requires writing 5–8 retrospective ADRs
for choices that were never recorded (planned in fase 6 of
../plans/docs-restructure-ai-lookup.md). - Two templates means a per-decision choice about which to use. Mitigated
by making Nygard the explicit default in
README.md.