adr

name

adr

description

Use when the user knows what they want built and says "/adr", "write an ADR for X", "decide and build X", or "ADR-driven". Turns an intent into a grounded, cited, build-ready ADR at docs/adr/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md — load-bearing decisions surfaced to the human — then hands off to the subagent-driven-development loop. For exploratory "not sure what I want yet" work use brainstorming first. Do NOT use for domain vocabulary (use domain-modeling) or for prose mechanics on an existing document (use writing-artifacts).

ADR-Driven Development (front-end for adr → sdd)

Turn an intent into one grounded, cited, build-ready ADR, then hand it to the deterministic subagent-driven-development (SDD) loop. This collapses brainstorm → spec → writing-plans → sdd into adr → sdd for "I know what I want, build it" work.

The arc:

intent → GROUND → ADR (you approve) → SDD loop → you ratify

Stay thin. This skill is a four-phase orchestrator — prose plus the two embedded blocks below. The determinism lives in sdd.mjs, not here. One ADR doc, not a multi-file apparatus. For exploratory "not sure what I want yet" work use brainstorming first.

Phase 1 — Ground (scaled)

Read the real code and current external practice the change touches. Default inline; escalate to a /deep-research fan-out only when the change is novel, cross-cutting, or the user asks — a research fan-out on a one-line change is the ceremony to avoid.

• State grounding: LSP (symbols/types/refs), git history, an Explore agent for breadth.
• Research grounding: context7 for library docs, the cloudflare MCP for CF, a /deep-research fan-out for novel/cross-cutting work or on request — current external knowledge, not ~1-year-stale training.
• Record which mode was used (inline vs research fan-out) in the ADR.

Output: a grounding brief — every claim already cited — that feeds the ADR.

Phase 2 — Author the ADR

Write docs/adr/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md (dated, not numbered; create docs/adr/ if absent) using the template below.

• Citation rule (hard): a codebase claim cites a file/symbol; an external claim cites a dated source; an ungrounded claim is excluded from the ADR. This makes "not stale training" auditable.
• Success criteria must be checkable. Phrase each so the loop can verify it — a test that must pass, a CI signal, a concrete assertion — and mark each oracle-backed or [checker] (checker-agent-evaluable, only when no oracle exists). This block is the loop's done-oracle.
• Decomposition is thin ### Task N subsections, placed LAST so task-brief extracts each cleanly — { n, title, tier, deps }-shaped, not pasted task prose.

ADR template (embed verbatim; Decomposition LAST)

# <Title>
**Status:** Proposed | Accepted | Superseded   **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD

## Context            <!-- grounded; every LOAD-BEARING claim cites a file/symbol or dated source -->
## Decisions          <!-- each load-bearing decision: options + the choice; these bind every task as global constraints -->
## Success criteria   <!-- CHECKABLE; each marked oracle-backed or [checker]; this is the loop's done-oracle -->
## Consequences       <!-- incl. hard-to-reverse bets / risks -->
## Grounding sources  <!-- files/symbols read + external sources WITH dates -->

## Decomposition      <!-- LAST section; thin `### Task N` subsections so task-brief extracts each -->
### Task 1: <title>
<2–4 lines: what to build, which files, deps, tier hint>
### Task 2: <title>
…

Budget the prose. Everything above ## Decomposition targets one page — roughly 500 words, hard ceiling 900. Decomposition is exempt; it scales with the work. The reference ADR is a ten-minute one-pager, and an ADR that takes longer to write than that is a format fighting its author.

Measured drift this exists to stop: transcoder/docs/adr/ averages 1,674 words per ADR, up to 5,283 — three to ten times the target. The inflation is almost entirely citation ceremony, so: cite the claims a reader would otherwise have to go verify, not every sentence, and keep ## Grounding sources to the handful of files and dated sources that actually moved the decision. A bibliography is not grounding. If a section needs more than its share, that is a signal the decision isn't settled yet — go back to Phase 1 rather than writing longer.

Phase 3 — Tiered decision gate (human-in-the-loop)

• Always-surface (blocking) set — new dependency · public-API change · schema/data-model change · architecture-shaping choice. Present each as an explicit choice the human picks before anything builds.
• Reversible decisions: record as "assuming X — override if wrong" defaults — non-blocking.
• Hard gate: nothing implements until the human approves the ADR (its decisions + criteria + decomposition).

Phase 4 — Handoff

On approval, resolve sdd.mjs by literal path — pinned to the version of subagent-driven-development, not this plugin's own version — and invoke the Workflow with the ADR.

Loud-fail guard: if the Decomposition has no parseable ### Task N entries, stop and fix the ADR — do not hand off (mirrors task-brief's "task N not found" guard). Nothing builds from an ADR the loop can't read.

Commit the ADR before you hand off. The loop's wave-0 preflight halts on any uncommitted change in the workdir — the ADR you just wrote is one — because wave worktrees are seeded from the committed tip and cannot see it. Commit (or stash) first, then resolve branchTip from the resulting HEAD:

git status --porcelain     # must be empty
git rev-parse HEAD         # this is branchTip

Resolve the loop and invoke it:

P="$HOME/.claude/plugins/cache/jasonm4130-claude-skills/subagent-driven-development/0.12.0/workflows/sdd.mjs"
[ -f "$P" ] && echo "$P" || echo "MISSING: subagent-driven-development 0.12.0 is not installed at $P — run /plugin marketplace update jasonm4130-claude-skills, or /plugin install subagent-driven-development@jasonm4130-claude-skills if it was never installed"

If it reports MISSING, stop and tell the user to update the plugin. Do not glob the cache for another version: superseded and rolled-back versions stay on disk, so picking the highest cached one silently runs a loop whose args contract this skill no longer matches.

Workflow({ scriptPath: "<resolved sdd.mjs>", args: {
  adrPath: "<abs path to docs/adr/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md>",
  workdir: "<worktree root>",
  pluginDir: "<plugin root containing workflows/ prompts/ scripts/>",
  globalConstraints: "<the ADR Decisions, verbatim>",
  successCriteria: "<the ADR Success criteria block, verbatim>",
  mergeBase: "<git merge-base main HEAD>",
  branchTip: "<git rev-parse HEAD in the workdir>",
  tasks: [ { n: 1, title: "...", tier: "opus", effort: "medium", deps: [] }, ... ],  // from the Decomposition
  limits: { fixRounds: 2, escalateAttempts: 2 }
}})

branchTip is not optional in practice: omitting it seeds wave 0 from mergeBase, which is a stale tree the moment the branch has any commits — and the ADR you just committed is one. Tiering follows subagent-driven-development's own table (its SKILL.md, § "Model tiering at a glance"); the floor is opus/medium, with effort as the cost lever rather than a cheaper model.

pluginDir is the directory containing workflows/, prompts/, and scripts/. The loop runs per-task implement → review → fix (model-tiered, ponytail-lensed) — Decomposition tasks whose deps allow it run as parallel waves with a per-wave merge gate, so mark deps honestly there — then judges the whole branch against the ADR's Success criteria (oracle gates + a checker agent). It converges only when oracles pass and the checker is satisfied; merge stays human-gated in your session — the loop never merges.

Scope guard

The loop is for bounded, test-covered work. Large ambiguous brownfield → break into smaller ADRs or run manually; don't force it through one ADR.

See also

• Design spec: 2026-06-27-adr-driven-development-design.md
• The loop it drives: the subagent-driven-development skill