Authority Boundary Review
Make authority claims explicit and verify them against operational behavior rather than diagrams alone.
Workflow
- Inventory relevant stores, queues, files, APIs, caches, and projections.
- For each artifact, identify:
- what fact or bytes it owns
- who may write it
- who reads it and for what decision
- whether it is authoritative, derived, cached, archival, or proposed
- Trace create, update, delete, retry, replay, backfill, and reconciliation paths.
- Locate the ratified contract: code, schema, policy, ADR, configuration, or live provider state. Label unratified documents as proposals.
- Test disagreement scenarios. State which source wins, how conflicts surface, and whether repair is automatic, manual, or absent.
- Identify ambiguous dual writers, irreversible projections, missing version checks, or reads that bypass the declared authority.
- Separate documentation corrections from physical migrations, writer changes, backfills, or deployments.
Output
Provide an authority matrix with Artifact, Owned fact, Class, Writer, Readers, Conflict rule, and Evidence. Follow it with confirmed boundaries, contradictions, proposed changes, and unresolved decisions.
Do not call a migration complete from schema or code changes alone. Writer cutover, historical data, reconciliation, deployment, and live reads require separate evidence.
1---2name: authority-boundary-review3description: Review a system or migration to identify authoritative stores, exact-byte custody, projections, writers, readers, reconciliation paths, and ratified versus proposed contracts. Use for data architecture, migration, integration, and source-of-truth decisions.4license: MIT5---67# Authority Boundary Review89Make authority claims explicit and verify them against operational behavior rather than diagrams alone.1011## Workflow12131. Inventory relevant stores, queues, files, APIs, caches, and projections.142. For each artifact, identify:15 - what fact or bytes it owns16 - who may write it17 - who reads it and for what decision18 - whether it is authoritative, derived, cached, archival, or proposed193. Trace create, update, delete, retry, replay, backfill, and reconciliation paths.204. Locate the ratified contract: code, schema, policy, ADR, configuration, or live provider state. Label unratified documents as proposals.215. Test disagreement scenarios. State which source wins, how conflicts surface, and whether repair is automatic, manual, or absent.226. Identify ambiguous dual writers, irreversible projections, missing version checks, or reads that bypass the declared authority.237. Separate documentation corrections from physical migrations, writer changes, backfills, or deployments.2425## Output2627Provide an authority matrix with `Artifact`, `Owned fact`, `Class`, `Writer`, `Readers`, `Conflict rule`, and `Evidence`. Follow it with confirmed boundaries, contradictions, proposed changes, and unresolved decisions.2829Do not call a migration complete from schema or code changes alone. Writer cutover, historical data, reconciliation, deployment, and live reads require separate evidence.
JovaniPink