Decision Review

decision-review

Audit a past architectural decision: restate what was chosen and why, compare the original assumptions against reality now, and produce a verdict (still valid / needs amendment / superseded). Ends with a historical-patterns memory candidate per the Analysis Memory Loop.

Direction: backward (did it hold?) not forward (which option?). For forward flow, use decision-record. For filing the ADR file, use adr-create.

When to use

• Revisiting a past architectural decision: "Did ADR-042 still make sense given what we learned?"
• A prior ADR is being cited as precedent and its validity should be checked before relying on it.
• A post-mortem or retrospective surfaces that an earlier choice may have contributed to problems.
• Preparation for a supersession: confirm the old decision actually needs replacing before writing a new ADR.
• Routed here by decision-revisit-gate when a beneficial change is blocked by a recorded lock (honest-null verdict, "don't relitigate" memory, budget canon, or ADR) — this skill supplies the backward-audit procedure that rule's re-evaluation offer points to.

Do NOT use when:

• Making or locking a new decision — use decision-record (which builds the options matrix and locks the choice).
• The ask is to file or number the ADR file — use adr-create.
• No prior decision or ADR exists to review — nothing to audit.

Procedure

1. Locate and inspect the decision

Identify the ADR in docs/decisions/ (flat, ADR-NNN-<slug>.md) or docs/adrs/<area>/ (per-area, NNNN-<slug>.md), or a logged decision in agents/decisions/. If the user named the decision informally, check the index for the slug before reading. Read the full file before proceeding.

2. Restate: what was decided and why

Extract and restate in your own words:

• Chosen option — what was picked.
• Context then — the forcing function that made the decision necessary.
• Assumptions — the explicit and implicit priors the decision rested on (load, team size, vendor stability, regulatory state, tech maturity, cost, etc.).
• Alternatives rejected — why each runner-up lost.

This restatement is the baseline. Later steps compare against it.

3. Compare to reality now

For each assumption identified in step 2, classify:

Also list new information that did not exist when the decision was made (new tooling, changed requirements, post-mortem learnings, usage data).

Hindsight discipline: judge each assumption against the information available at the time it was made, not against the outcome alone. A decision can be correct given the information then and still need revision now.

Read the record's axes in this order — each step can end the review, so running them out of order pays for the expensive ones first:

1. Effective state — status, superseded_by, amendments, whether the review_trigger fired. superseded/deprecated is not a live lock at all.
2. provenance (+ agentic_mode) — who decided; descriptive only.
3. evidence.strength — E0–E4, claim-relative, not a count of sources.
4. evidence.discovery — on E0, incomplete means nobody looked: a discovery failure, not an evidence failure. Search before treating the absence as established, or the grade measures the review, not the decision.
5. Current evidence — what tree, measurements and sources say today.
6. Reversibility — of the transition you propose, not of the original decision. The routing unit is the transition, never the document.
7. Reserved dimensions — protected_dimensions, reopen_policy (absent → unclassified, which is not owner).

Then price the reopen record from the grade × provenance burden table in adr-layout § The reopen record — cheap for an E0/E1 agentic snapshot, surfaced rather than obeyed or overturned for E0/E1 human, the standard five fields at E2, and those fields plus engaging the original evidence in kind at E3/E4. Read the table; do not reconstruct it from memory. The axes are defined by adr-layout § Provenance and evidence, not here.

4. Verdict

One of three:

• Still valid — assumptions largely held; no amendment needed. Document the validation date so future reviewers know it was checked.
• Needs amendment — core decision stands but one or more consequences or constraints must be updated. Recommend the specific amendment and suggest filing a narrow ADR or addendum.
• Superseded — the chosen option no longer serves the original goal or a new forcing function invalidates it. Name the successor option. Recommend handing off to decision-record (to lock the new choice) then adr-create (to file the superseding ADR with supersedes: ADR-NNN).

5. Memory write-back (dedup-first)

Before drafting a new candidate, call retrieve() over the same key-space (decision area, affected paths):

• Match found — propose a frequency / supersedes update to the existing entry. Do not create a duplicate.
• No match — draft a new historical-patterns candidate per the Analysis Memory Loop § 1:

{
  "type": "historical-patterns",
  "summary": "<one-line pattern: what held or broke>",
  "evidence_paths": ["docs/decisions/ADR-NNN-<slug>.md"],
  "decision_surface": ["<area1>", "<area2>"],
  "last_validated": "YYYY-MM-DD",
  "review_after_days": 90,
  "applicable_scope": "project"
}

Surface the draft to the user via /memory propose. Never auto-promote. If the candidate fails the admission gate (< 2 distinct evidence paths AND < 3 future decisions in decision_surface), surface the gap and suggest deferring or strengthening evidence.

Output

1. Decision restatement — chosen option, context then, assumptions, alternatives rejected.
2. Assumption-drift table — each assumption: held / broke / unknown, with evidence.
3. New information not available at decision time.
4. Verdict — still valid / needs amendment / superseded — with rationale.
5. (optional) Memory candidate — historical-patterns draft or update proposal.

Do NOT

• Re-litigate a decision that the verdict confirms is still valid. Acknowledge it, note the validation date, stop.
• Duplicate decision-record's options matrix and trade-off table — this skill reads the old matrix; it does not rebuild one unless the verdict is "superseded" and a new decision process is needed.
• Auto-promote memory candidates — the human drives promotion per the Analysis Memory Loop.
• Issue a "superseded" verdict without naming the successor option or recommending the forward path to decision-record + adr-create.

Gotchas

• Backward vs forward: decision-review asks "did the chosen option hold up?" — decision-record asks "which option should we pick?" Conflating them produces a partial analysis: either a verdict without a replacement plan, or a replacement plan without understanding what broke.
• Hindsight bias: a decision made with the information available then can be correct even if the outcome was poor. State what was known at the time; avoid framing a correct past decision as wrong because newer facts exist.
• Stale memory entries: if retrieve() returns entries in skipped (stale — age > review_after_days), surface them to the user; do not silently use stale entries as if they were current.

Removal is a disposition — a rule the agent keeps failing gets teeth or gets deleted

A RULE THE AGENT CONSISTENTLY FAILS TO FOLLOW GETS STRUCTURAL ENFORCEMENT
OR DELETION. NEVER A LOUDER RESTATEMENT.
ASK WHAT CAN BE REMOVED AS DELIBERATELY AS WHAT SHOULD BE ADDED.

Ratchets in this tree move one way. Counts go up, gates accumulate, and nothing retires an artifact — so the default response to non-adherence has been to say it again, harder. That is the one response the evidence rules out: an obligation that did not change behaviour as prose does not change it as louder prose. The fork is enforcement or deletion, and both are real options.

Non-adherence is the trigger, not low frequency. A rule that rarely fires is not a rule that fails. A floor is working precisely when nothing crosses it, and deleting it because it has been quiet removes the thing that was holding.

The simplify signals

Any of these is a reason to open the question. None of them is on its own a verdict:

• a section that has not been relevant across many sessions;
• a rule derived from a single unvalidated observation;
• a workflow that is consistently shortcut in practice;
• sections that are loaded every run and never acted on;
• two rules that contradict each other;
• complexity added for a case that has never triggered.

Note that never relevant, single unvalidated observation, and never acted on are listed separately on purpose. They look alike and they are not: the first is about scope, the second about evidence, the third about attention.

Escalation, and its counterpart

A THIRD RECURRENCE OF THE SAME VIOLATION CLASS CONVERTS AN OBSERVATION
INTO A DETERMINISTIC GATE.
A REVIEW FINDING NEVER SILENTLY BECOMES A HARD GATE.
ESCALATE AT A STATED THRESHOLD, NEVER SILENTLY.

Both halves are load-bearing and they come from sources that disagree. The threshold stops a recurring defect from being re-observed forever; the counterpart stops a single reviewer's opinion from quietly becoming law. Between them, the only legitimate path from noticed to enforced is a stated count reached in the open.

Decision-revisit gate — mechanics (migrated from the decision-revisit-gate rule)

Body of decision-revisit-gate (per P4 of road-to-kernel-and-router.md). The Iron Law — benefit blocked by a lock → surface + offer re-evaluation, never silent compliance — stays in the rule; the lock catalog, fire steps, and failure modes live here.

What counts as a "lock"

• An eval verdict recorded as an honest null (a mechanism was tested, showed no lift, and the disposition says "don't rebuild without new evidence").
• A memory entry or agents/settings/contexts/ note tagged "don't relitigate" / "settled" / a locked council convergence.
• A budget or frugality-canon line (token-budget-discipline, telegraph-speak, thin-projector trimming) that rejects a change on cost grounds alone.
• An ADR whose decision is being cited as a blocker for the current change.
• A hard structural cap (kernel size, per-domain persona cap, rich-skill ratio). A change that genuinely qualifies to cross the cap — e.g. a new rule that truly meets the kernel-membership inclusion criteria — triggers a cap-raise proposal + maintainer/council approval, never a silent downgrade of the rule to fit the old number (e.g. demoting a must-always-fire rule to auto just because the kernel says 9). Fitting the cap is not a reason to weaken a qualifying rule; but a rule that does not meet the criteria stays out — the cap is not the reason, the criteria are.

What to do when it fires

1. Mechanism-match check — do this FIRST. A verdict settles the mechanism it tested, not every future proposal that resembles it. Before applying the lock, verify the blocked change is actually the same mechanism — not merely a similar-sounding one. A null on hardened blocking enforcement does not automatically cover discretionary contextual nudges; a null on one architecture does not cover a materially different one. If the mechanism differs, the lock does not apply — proceed, noting the distinction.

2. If the mechanism genuinely matches, do not silently comply. Surface, in one short block:

   • What change is blocked.
   • Which lock blocks it (cite the memory/context/ADR).
   • Under what conditions the lock was recorded (date, evidence, or "maintainer decision" if settled-by-decision rather than settled-by-evidence).
   • What has changed since (new evidence, new model generation, new tooling, repeated encounters) that makes revisiting worth the cost.

3. Offer numbered options (per user-interaction), always including: re-evaluate the lock in the AI council. Other options: keep the lock as-is, or proceed without the blocked change.

4. On re-evaluation: run this skill's Procedure above for the backward audit and route to ai-council for the debate mechanics. The rule owns the obligation to surface; this skill and the council own the procedure.

5. Record the outcome with scope + revisit-if per ai-council's convergence-summary contract — every re-evaluated lock gets a fresh, correctly-scoped disposition, not a re-statement of the old one.

   When the lock is an ADR, the disposition carries the five-field reopen record from adr-layout § Reopen record: the original rationale addressed (not cited), what changed with tree evidence, dependants and external commitments touched, the rollback path, and a blast radius — narrow | wide | irreversible — with the evidence for that call. Two clauses bind the same record: precedent creates no authority (that a similar ADR was reopened is never grounds for this one), and one seat must argue the strongest case for keeping the decision. Both answer precedent laundering through correlated self-review, which is the failure two independent council seats named for this mechanism on 2026-08-19: the proposer frames the evidence, correlated seats ratify, and the amendment becomes authoritative input for the next review.

   Proportionally: a narrow, reversible, bounded transition takes the light path (record + council); wide or irreversible adds owner notification. Identical ceremony for a typo-level amendment would cost more than asking the owner and the mechanism would die of its own weight.

The grade prices the record, never the authority

AN EVIDENCE GRADE IS A MEASUREMENT, NOT A PERMISSION.
IT PRICES THE REOPEN RECORD AND THE REVIEW PRIORITY. IT CONFERS NO AUTHORITY.
A LOW GRADE NEVER LETS AN AGENT SUPERSEDE A RECORD ON ITS OWN.

Nothing in the burden table changes who may act: venue comes from the discriminator, the trust boundaries the transition touches, and the owner-reserved rows — never from the grade.

The coupling was proposed and refused: two council seats independently named it the design's central defect, because the party assigning the grade would also be the party gaining authority from it, and would additionally be self-classifying its own transition as reversible-internal — itself an authority-bearing classification. Calling the result "provisional" changes neither the trust boundary nor the blast radius. Whether an independently validated grade may ever reduce the authorization burden is owner-reserved and open: do not answer it here — it is the authority-coupling-decision blocker in road-to-evidence-based-adr-governance, and adr-layout § The reopen record closes on the same point.

Two consequences that are easy to get backwards:

• An ADR's historical decision-maker does not determine its reopen venue. A record decided by a council does not need a council to reopen it; a record decided by one agent is not thereby an agent's to overturn.
• A low-evidence record may state a decision; it does not establish that the alternatives remain invalid. "We chose B because we had to choose" is legitimate and publishable — but never grounds for "A is forbidden, the ADR says B", which needs evidence the record never carried.

When NOT to fire

• The blocked change has no real benefit — the gate is not a lever to reopen every settled question; no-cheap-questions still governs whether the resulting numbered-options block is a real question or noise. A revisit-offer with a genuine trade-off is never a "cheap question" under that rule — but a revisit-offer with no actual case for change is.
• The mechanism-match check (step 1) shows the lock is the same mechanism and no new evidence exists — apply the lock, no surfacing needed; this is the lock working as intended.
• The user already declined a revisit on this exact lock this conversation — per scope-control § Decline = silence, do not re-ask.

Failure modes

• Treating a "don't relitigate" memory as permanently closed instead of as settled-under-conditions-X.
• Applying a null verdict to a superficially similar but architecturally different mechanism without running the mechanism-match check.
• Letting the token-frugality canon auto-reject a net-positive change without surfacing the trade-off — see token-budget-discipline's value-over-budget clause.
• Silently dropping a good idea because "we already decided this" — the canonical failure the gate exists to stop.
• Reading a low evidence.strength as permission to supersede — the grade prices the record, it never moves the venue.
• Treating discovery: incomplete as established absence: that grades the review, not the decision.
• Citing a low-evidence ADR as proof its rejected alternatives are still invalid. It records a choice, not a refutation.

See also

• decision-revisit-gate — the rule whose migrated mechanics live above.
• decision-record — forward flow: lock a new choice.
• adr-create — file the ADR after a decision is locked.
• blameless-post-mortem — incident review; may hand off to decision-review when a prior architectural choice is implicated.
• docs/contracts/analysis-memory-loop.md — produce → propose → promote → retrieve contract.