adr-writing

adr-writing is a skill for Claude Code from HigorAlves/orc. It costs 50 tokens per session (1,115 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for writing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs): short documents that explain important technical choices, alternatives, and trade-offs. It stores them in docs/adr/NNNN-.md and supports replacing an older decision.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when choosing technology, setting a shared convention, or defining boundaries across modules. It also helps update or supersede an existing ADR.
Why use it?
It keeps the reasoning behind long-lasting architecture choices from being lost in code or team memory. Future developers can understand why a choice was made without reconstructing the discussion.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the orc plugin — 80 skills, 30 commands, 14 agents, 5 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it when choosing technology, setting a shared convention, or defining boundaries across modules. It also helps update or supersede an existing ADR.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add HigorAlves/orc --skill adr-writing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HigorAlves/orc

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install orc, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 80 skills, 30 commands, 14 agents, 5 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for adr-writing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for adr-writing

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/higoralves/orc/adr-writing.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 50 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,115 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00050 $0.01115
Opus 5 $0.00025 $0.00558
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00223
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00112

Measured 10d ago against content hash 186a6b817e18, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

adr-writing scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

orc/skills/adr-writing/SKILL.md · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

ADR Writing

Defer to orc:doc-writing for the shared scaffolding: the doc-type map (ADR vs PRD vs TRD vs RFC vs postmortem, and how ADRs differ from RFCs and plans), the shared section outline, the docs/<type>s/NNNN-*.md numbering & publication convention, and the review gates. This skill carries only the ADR-specific template, status transitions, and tone.

ADRs are the contract between past-you and future-you. They capture why a decision was made, not just what was chosen, so a year later nobody has to reverse-engineer the trade-offs from code.

When to write one

Write an ADR when all of these are true:

  • The decision is architectural — affects multiple modules, defines a boundary, picks a technology, or sets a convention everyone follows.
  • The decision is non-obvious — there were real alternatives, and another smart engineer might pick differently.
  • The decision is durable — you expect it to live ≥ 3 months. Tactical tweaks don't deserve ADRs.

Don't write ADRs for:

  • Library version bumps with no API impact
  • Bug fixes
  • Naming choices inside a single file
  • Decisions you'll revisit next sprint

Note: ADRs live at docs/adr/NNNN-<kebab-decision-name>.md (singular adr dir name by convention). All other numbering mechanics are the shared convention in orc:doc-writing.

Template

Every ADR uses this shape:

# NNNN — <Decision title in noun phrase>

- **Status:** Proposed | Accepted | Superseded by NNNN | Deprecated
- **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD (when status was last updated)
- **Deciders:** <names or roles>

## Context

What is the situation that demanded a decision? What forces are at play (technical, organizational, regulatory)? Quote real numbers, real constraints, real deadlines. 1–3 paragraphs.

## Decision

The chosen approach, stated as a single declarative sentence. Then 1–3 paragraphs explaining how it works in this codebase.

## Alternatives considered

Each alternative gets a short subsection:

### Option A — <name>
- What it would look like
- Why it was rejected (one or two specific reasons)

### Option B — <name>
…

Include "do nothing" as an alternative if it was real.

## Consequences

What changes because of this decision?

- **Positive:** <what gets easier, safer, faster>
- **Negative:** <what gets harder, more brittle, more locked in>
- **Neutral:** <visible side-effects without strong polarity>

Be honest about negatives. An ADR with no negatives is a sales pitch, not a record.

## Follow-ups

- [ ] Concrete tasks unlocked by accepting this decision (link to issues/PRs).
- [ ] Open questions to revisit later, with a date.

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 103 lines · 50 tokens per session scan A 186a6b817e18

Subscribe to this mod's changes

adr-writing is a skill published in the GitHub repository HigorAlves/orc (6 stars, last pushed 13d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 50 tokens to every session and 1,115 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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