documentation-and-adrs

An Architecture Decision Record captures the rationale, constraints, and trade-offs behind significant design choices to preserve historical context. You need an ADR when making API changes, introducing new system components, or altering public interfaces.

To document architectural decisions, create a new ADR using a structured template and store it in a docs/decisions/ directory. This captures the alternatives considered and consequences to maintain historical context for future engineers and agents.

The ADR lifecycle transitions through Proposed, Accepted, Superseded, or Deprecated states. These lifecycle guidelines manage updates by tracking status changes, ensuring engineers understand when a decision was replaced or invalidated.

The best way to maintain API documentation is applying conventions for consistent public-facing interfaces alongside inline documentation practices that explain the rationale behind code and API decisions beyond what the code itself shows.

Architecture decision records are useful for team onboarding and knowledge transfer, providing the context of past decisions to new team members and AI agents so they understand why specific design choices were made.

ADRs should not be used for minor changes that lack significant trade-offs. They are designed to capture major design choices, constraints, and alternatives for API changes or new system components where historical context is critical.