| name | decision-record |
| description | Capture an architectural decision so the next session (or engineer) knows WHY. Use after any non-obvious technical choice. |
| when_to_use | picked a library/pattern/schema, a tradeoff was made, a hard-to-reverse choice |
Decision Record (ADR)
Write a short file docs/decisions/NNN-<slug>.md:
- Context — what forced a decision. The constraints.
- Options — the 2-3 real candidates, one line each.
- Decision — what you picked, dated.
- Why — the tradeoff. What you gave up. "We picked Postgres over Mongo because we need real joins; we accept heavier ops."
- Consequences — what this now makes easy and hard.
Hard-to-reverse choices (schema, auth, data store) MUST get one. Future-you will ask "why on earth did we do this" — answer it now.