168 records -> docs/decisions/records/<area>/<topic>.md (163 active, 23 dirs) and
docs/decisions/archive/<area>/<topic>.md (5 archived). The filename IS the key,
so one-active-record-per-key becomes a filesystem property rather than a
validator check, and supersession becomes a `git mv`.
WHY: the monolith was a concurrency problem before an aesthetic one. A
3,900-line append target made parallel sessions collide -- PR #605 and PR #614
both hit append-vs-append conflicts during routine rebases, and hand-resolving
those inside the corpus is exactly the operation the rationale-rewrite guard
exists to police.
HOW IT IS VERIFIED: a ~170-file diff cannot be meaningfully read, so correctness
does not rest on reading it. The parser was taught BOTH formats first, so the
body-diff guard parses the old form at the merge-base and the new form at head --
the migration validates itself, no bypass. The proof is a field-level equivalence
harness: 168 records before and after, zero lost, zero gained, zero field
mismatches, zero rationale bodies differing. Reviewers should scrutinise the
harness; it is the actual evidence.
What measuring caught that reading would not have:
- ~500 lines sit OUTSIDE any record -- decisions.md's lifecycle schema and each
topic file's preamble, mostly the only copy. Source files are kept and
stripped, never deleted. They also cannot be filed per-area: topic files hold
several areas and 4 of 23 areas span several files.
- Archive discovery was a non-recursive glob; after the split it found ZERO
archived records, surfacing as four bogus "supersedes points to unknown key"
errors rather than an obvious failure.
- ~32 live docs point into the corpus BY DATE, which the split dangles. Each
stripped file now ends with a generated "Records formerly in this file" index,
which also rescues the identical breadcrumbs in old issue comments.
- decisions.md's "In this file:" list was 97 same-file anchor bullets that the
split makes WRONG, not merely stale. Dropped; the generated index replaces
them with links that resolve.
The equivalence harness now runs against a checked-in FIXTURE, not the live
corpus. The earlier version migrated the real tree, which made it a one-shot:
the moment the migration landed there was nothing left to move and the tests
failed for reasons unrelated to the code. A fixture keeps them testing the
SCRIPT rather than the repo's current state.
Keys preserved verbatim, warts included: `sched` (12) and `scheduling` (1) remain
two directories for one concept. Renaming a key is not a move -- it changes
identity, breaks the equivalence proof, and invalidates MemPalace's per-key
drawers. Taxonomy normalisation is separate work.
refs #610
timothy
