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
Archive — superseded / retired decision records
This directory holds decision records whose status is superseded or retired. They are kept
verbatim (rationale prose untouched — see docs/decisions.md header and scripts/decisions_lib.py)
for history: why we changed our mind is the point, never silently rewritten.
They are out of the active startup path: scripts/decisions_lib.py active_files() /
all_active_records() do not glob this directory, docs/decisions/README.md (the active catalog)
never lists a record from here, and an agent doing task-router discovery should not need to read
this directory to find the current rule — follow a record's superseded-by key to the active
successor instead.
The lifecycle validator (scripts/decisions_validate.py) still enforces invariants here:
- a
superseded/retiredrecord MUST live under this directory, never in an active file; - an
activerecord MUST NOT live under this directory; supersedes/superseded-bykeys must resolve reciprocally to a record in the active set OR here;- a record moved here must not have its rationale prose changed in the same commit (unless the
commit message carries the
[decisions-edit]token, reserved for genuine rationale edits).
One file per topic cluster (e.g. ci.md, release-ci-governance.md), mirroring the active
docs/decisions/*.md topic-file split. See docs/decisions/migration-map.md for the legacy
heading → key → status → location mapping produced during the #521 lifecycle migration.