decision-capture

Decision capture

Decision records are the small docs-first layer for durable project decisions. They are broader than the narrow ADR threshold. If a decision constrains future work and later agents would benefit from seeing it, it can earn a decision record even when it is not especially surprising or hard to reverse.

When to Use

Use this skill when a project decision needs a tracked Markdown record because it constrains future work. Common scopes include:

• process,
• architecture,
• backend choice,
• role boundaries,
• quality rules,
• security posture,
• release rules,
• product direction,
• accepted project conventions,
• verification.

Strong ADR-style signals such as hard to reverse, surprising, or tradeoff-heavy still matter, but they are not the only trigger.

Verification operating decisions

This is a promotion path, not timeout handling. First use [[verification-evidence]] to record the task attempt. The maintainer then triages it and, when the observation affects repeated project work, records or updates the current VF-... fact in .agenticloop/project.md.

Use this skill for verification only when that already-recorded fact represents a policy-level conclusion that constrains future work, such as a project rule to use CI rather than local execution for a class of checks. The decision cites the VF-... fact and its durable task/event evidence, states the policy and revisit trigger, and follows the normal acceptance gate.

Do not use this skill for one timeout, ordinary timing noise, a retry choice, a task attempt, final timeout triage, or a mutable verification-fact update. Engineers report those observations; delegation observations never approve a strategy. A decision is not created merely because a check is expensive.

When Not to Use

Do not create a decision record for:

• ordinary task notes,
• implementation summaries,
• raw meeting notes,
• raw chat transcripts,
• temporary debugging observations,
• one-off local experiments that do not constrain later work,
• a current, non-binding project operating fact – record it in ## Project Operating Facts in .agenticloop/project.md instead,
• a compact pointer to a runbook – that is a Project Operating Fact, not a decision.