Cross Reference Management

Cross-Reference Management

Intro

A CrossReference is a lightweight typed link between two entities, expressed as a field in the subject's frontmatter rather than as its own file. It is the right choice for simple, unscoped, permanent relationships — "A blocks B", "decision X is related to work item Y". When a relationship needs scope, time, or its own attributes, use a Binding instead.

Overview

CrossReference is not a file

Unlike every other primitive, CrossReference does not get its own file. It is a convention for frontmatter fields — a typed list of pointers.

# In a WorkItem's frontmatter:
spec:
  blocks: [BACK-swift-oak]
  blocked_by: [BACK-calm-fox]
  related_decisions: [DEC-023]

Each field name encodes the relationship type. The fields vary per primitive; the convention is shared.

Conventional cross-reference field names

Workflow

1. Pick the field that best fits the relationship. Prefer specific over generic.
2. Add the target ID(s) to that field in the subject's frontmatter.
3. For bidirectional relationships (blocks ↔ blocked_by), update both sides.
4. Log workitem.linked (or similar) with details.relation + details.target.

Cross-reference vs Binding

If the link has its own properties worth querying, it's a Binding. Otherwise, it's a cross-reference.

Gotchas

Agent-specific failure modes — provider-neutral pause-and-self-check items:

• Using a cross-reference when scope or time matters. If the relationship is "Alice owns this for sprint 42" or "this gate applies on main only", that's a Binding, not a cross-reference. Cross-references can't carry temporal validity or scoping — reaching for one when you need a Binding silently loses the qualification.
• Forgetting to add the inverse side of an asymmetric pair. blocks / blocked_by, parent / children, supersedes / superseded_by are all bidirectional. If you set one side without setting the other, the index ends up with a broken half-edge. Always set both.
• Cross-referencing a non-existent entity ID. A typo in a reference (BACK-1234 vs BACK-12345) silently breaks navigation and produces a dangling edge. Verify the target exists via index-management.get_entity before writing the reference.
• Treating cross-references as authoritative state. A cross-reference is metadata about a relationship; the authoritative state lives on the entity itself. If a workitem's parent says it's part of an epic but the epic's children doesn't include it, the parent reference is wrong, not the epic.
• Cross-referencing aggressively just because you can. Every cross-reference is graph clutter for queries. Reserve them for relationships a future agent or human will actually need to navigate, not for "these two things vaguely relate".
• Adding cross-references to entities you don't own the schema for. If you're tempted to put a custom field on a primitive's frontmatter, consider whether it belongs in metadata.tags or in a Binding instead. Schema drift across primitives breaks validation.
• Confusing cross-references with discussions/decisions. A cross-reference says "these are related"; it does not capture WHY. If the why matters, write a Discussion or DecisionRecord and cross-reference THAT, not the underlying entities directly.

Full reference

Bidirectional integrity

Some cross-references are inherently bidirectional (blocks/blocked_by, parent/children, supersedes/superseded_by). Agents should update both sides when adding or removing. The index MCP server (Phase 3) will surface one-sided references as lint warnings.

Typed vs generic related

Prefer typed fields (related_decisions, related_workitems) over the generic related — they make queries and rendering much cleaner. Only fall back to related when there is no natural typed field.

Field naming convention

Cross-reference field names are lowercase snake_case, use plural form for lists, and describe the relationship from the subject's perspective. "A blocks B" is expressed as blocks: [B] on A, not blocker_of: [B].

Resolving a cross-reference

To find all entities that reference X:

• By field scan: grep all frontmatter for X's ID appearing in any list.
• Via index MCP server: query(target=X) returns all cross-references across all entity kinds.

Migration to Binding

If a cross-reference grows attributes over time ("this block has a reason and an expiry date"), migrate to a Binding:

1. Create a Binding with type: blocking, subject: A, target: B, plus the new attributes.
2. Remove the cross-reference field from A.
3. Log workitem.link.migrated.

This is the only case where removing a cross-reference is routine; normally you keep them forever.