Architecture Decision Records

Coverage

Create and audit ADRs for significant technical choices. Covers decision context, forces, considered options, chosen decision, rejected alternatives, consequences, status, supersession, links to implementation, and follow-up verification. Use for decisions with future readers, cross-team consequences, operational cost, or hard-to-reverse effects.

Philosophy

An ADR is not a design essay. It is a durable answer to "Why did we choose this, given what we knew then?" It should preserve the tradeoff, not retroactively make the decision look inevitable.

Good ADRs are short, dated, statused, and honest about consequences. If a future agent cannot tell whether the decision still holds, the record failed.

Method