The moment
The architecture decision is written, accepted and unambiguous. The implementation does the thing it rejected. Nobody defied the decision; the change was made by someone who had never seen it, and reviewed by someone who had forgotten it.
Why it happens
A decision record is a document in a directory. The work happens in files somewhere else. Unless something relates the two, the decision is discoverable only by a reader who already suspects it exists — which is the reader who did not need it.
Why a better model does not fix it
The worker was not given the decision. Nothing about capability changes which documents reach a session; that is a retrieval question with a deterministic answer, and it should be answered by resolution rather than by inference.
What it costs
A design erodes one reasonable change at a time. By the time it is noticed, the system does something nobody chose, and reversing it costs more than the original decision did — so usually the decision is quietly rewritten to match the code.
What Majordomus does
A decision names what it put in force, as typed references: a rule of the effective set, a
claim, a file, a behavioural test. Every reference is validated, and the knowledge graph
turns each into an edge, so the reverse index — what this rule, this file or this test was
decided by — is derived rather than authored twice. Scoped context documents attach to the
paths they govern, and context affected reads a change set from git and reports which
documents and scopes it touches, including a tracked source whose document is now due for
review.
Before and after
before .ai/repo/adrs/0007-….md (accepted, unread)
lib/skills/registry.rs (does the rejected thing)
after $ majordomus context affected --staged
lib/skills/registry.rs tracked by adr-0007 "skills are data, not registrations"What it does not do
It does not judge whether a change contradicts a decision — that is a reading, and a person does it. It makes sure the decision is in front of the person and the worker doing the reading, and that superseding one is an explicit, reviewable act.