architect-decision — Design Direction & Architectural Decision

Domain Rubric

Framing Axes

Establish grounded direction before implementation. Resolve irrelevant axes to N/A with a reason; resolve material axes before settling the choice:

• Problem Boundary: Operational outcome and observable success criteria, separate from the requested mechanism.
• Hard Constraints: Non-negotiables eliminating approach families: time, money, compliance, data safety, platform, or team capacity.
• Frozen Surface: Contracts, persisted data, APIs, and relied-on behavior that must survive unchanged.
• Reversibility Class: One-way doors foreclose undo; two-way doors permit reversal without external cost. Identify concrete rollback exposure.

Framing Discipline

• Inference Before Inquiry: Ask about business consequences, infer technical constraints from evidence, and offer grounded defaults for confirmation.