# 0001 · Record architecture decisions

**Status:** Accepted · 2026-09-22

## Context

CoDNA is open source. People who did not attend the conversation will read the schema and ask why it
is shaped this way — and a decision whose reasoning is lost gets re-litigated, or worse, reversed by
someone who assumed there was no reason.

## Decision

Every decision that would be expensive to reverse gets a numbered record here: context, decision,
consequences, and the alternatives that were rejected with why.

Records are immutable once accepted. A reversal is a new record that supersedes the old one, which
is marked accordingly. Editing history to look consistent destroys the only thing that makes these
worth keeping.

## Consequences

- A pull request that contradicts an ADR has to say so.
- The rejected-alternatives section is the most valuable part and the most often skipped, so it is
  mandatory.

## Alternatives rejected

**Comments in the code.** They explain how, not why, and they disappear in the refactor that the
reasoning was supposed to constrain.

**A wiki page per topic.** Gets edited until it describes only the present, losing the sequence that
explains it.