Own the decisions

A decision is a choice among alternatives where taking one closes the others off. A task waiting to be carried out is not one.

The builder scopes the decision set. Not every decision is the builder's; deciding which are is.

A decision the builder keeps is recorded. The record carries what was considered and rejected, why the choice was made, whose seat the decision sits in, and the way back, meaning how the choice is undone.

The seat is the party best grounded on the question, not the party with authority over it. Where authority and grounding sit with different parties, the record names the grounded one.

Alternatives are spent at the decision. Nothing downstream reopens them. A specification that revisits a rejected alternative is a violation. A record naming the chosen option and none of the ones it displaced is a violation.

The violation is not that the model decided. It is that the model decided and the builder did not know it was a decision. A choice made inside the work and never surfaced is a violation. A recorded decision with no way back is a violation.

Decisions are the judgment calls the builder keeps. What happens to a task already delegated is the concern of Classify then route.

Inspection

Walk me through the last few decisions recorded here, then tell me which decisions you have been making that nobody wrote down.

Held this, or broke it? Say which principle and what happened — tell me at /contact, subject Principles. What moves a band is somebody else's experience, and I'll publish what moved and who moved it.