Documentation Generation

Skill 64 of 185

Architecture Decision Records

Write and maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) following best practices for technical decision documentation.

1 minute · 223 words · 13 sections

Install

$ npx skills add wshobson/agents --skill architecture-decision-records

$ npx skills add wshobson/agents

» /plugin marketplace add wshobson/agents

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

Comprehensive patterns for creating, maintaining, and managing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) that capture the context and rationale behind significant technical decisions.

When to Use This Skill

Making significant architectural decisions
Documenting technology choices
Recording design trade-offs
Onboarding new team members
Reviewing historical decisions
Establishing decision-making processes

Core Concepts

1. What is an ADR?

An Architecture Decision Record captures:

Context: Why we needed to make a decision
Decision: What we decided
Consequences: What happens as a result

2. When to Write an ADR

Write ADR	Skip ADR
New framework adoption	Minor version upgrades
Database technology choice	Bug fixes
API design patterns	Implementation details
Security architecture	Routine maintenance
Integration patterns	Configuration changes

3. ADR Lifecycle

Proposed → Accepted → Deprecated → Superseded
              ↓
           Rejected

Before drafting a standard, lightweight, or Y-statement ADR, read decision templates (opens in a new tab).

Before drafting a deprecation ADR or RFC, read deprecation and RFC templates (opens in a new tab).

ADR Management

Directory Structure

docs/
├── adr/
│   ├── README.md           # Index and guidelines
│   ├── template.md         # Team's ADR template
│   ├── 0001-use-postgresql.md
│   ├── 0002-caching-strategy.md
│   ├── 0003-mongodb-user-profiles.md  # [DEPRECATED]
│   └── 0020-deprecate-mongodb.md      # Supersedes 0003

ADR Index (README.md)

# Architecture Decision Records

This directory contains Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for [Project Name].

## Index

| ADR                                   | Title                              | Status     | Date       |
| ------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ---------- | ---------- |
| [0001](0001-use-postgresql.md)        | Use PostgreSQL as Primary Database | Accepted   | 2024-01-10 |
| [0002](0002-caching-strategy.md)      | Caching Strategy with Redis        | Accepted   | 2024-01-12 |
| [0003](0003-mongodb-user-profiles.md) | MongoDB for User Profiles          | Deprecated | 2023-06-15 |
| [0020](0020-deprecate-mongodb.md)     | Deprecate MongoDB                  | Accepted   | 2024-01-15 |

## Creating a New ADR

1. Copy `template.md` to `NNNN-title-with-dashes.md`
2. Fill in the template
3. Submit PR for review
4. Update this index after approval

## ADR Status

- **Proposed**: Under discussion
- **Accepted**: Decision made, implementing
- **Deprecated**: No longer relevant
- **Superseded**: Replaced by another ADR
- **Rejected**: Considered but not adopted

Automation (adr-tools)

# Install adr-tools
brew install adr-tools

# Initialize ADR directory
adr init docs/adr

# Create new ADR
adr new "Use PostgreSQL as Primary Database"

# Supersede an ADR
adr new -s 3 "Deprecate MongoDB in Favor of PostgreSQL"

# Generate table of contents (to a separate file, so the hand-written
# index and guidelines in README.md are not overwritten)
adr generate toc > docs/adr/toc.md

# Link related ADRs
adr link 2 "Complements" 1 "Is complemented by"

Review Process

## ADR Review Checklist

### Before Submission

- [ ] Context clearly explains the problem
- [ ] All viable options considered
- [ ] Pros/cons balanced and honest
- [ ] Consequences (positive and negative) documented
- [ ] Related ADRs linked

### During Review

- [ ] At least 2 senior engineers reviewed
- [ ] Affected teams consulted
- [ ] Security implications considered
- [ ] Cost implications documented
- [ ] Reversibility assessed

### After Acceptance

- [ ] ADR index updated
- [ ] Team notified
- [ ] Implementation tickets created
- [ ] Related documentation updated

Best Practices

Do’s

Write ADRs early - Before implementation starts
Keep them short - 1-2 pages maximum
Be honest about trade-offs - Include real cons
Link related decisions - Build decision graph
Update status - Deprecate when superseded

Don’ts

Don’t change accepted ADRs - Write new ones to supersede
Don’t skip context - Future readers need background
Don’t hide failures - Rejected decisions are valuable
Don’t be vague - Specific decisions, specific consequences
Don’t forget implementation - ADR without action is waste

About this skill

Trigger

Write and maintain Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) following best practices for technical decision documentation. Use when documenting significant technical decisions, reviewing past architectural choices, or establishing decision processes.

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/wshobson/agents, branch main, last pushed 9 November 2026.

Licence

MIT — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

185 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 52 distinct layouts observed: plugins/accessibility-compliance/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/agent-teams/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/api-scaffolding/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/avoid-ai-writing/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/backend-development/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/before-you-build/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/block-no-verify/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/blockchain-web3/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/brand-landingpage/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/business-analytics/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/cicd-automation/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/cloud-infrastructure/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/conductor/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/content-marketing/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/data-engineering/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/database-design/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/developer-essentials/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/dgx-spark-ops/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/documentation-generation/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/documentation-standards/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/dotnet-contribution/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/file-conversion/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/framework-migration/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/frontend-mobile-development/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/game-development/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/hermes-tweet/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/hr-legal-compliance/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/incident-response/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/javascript-typescript/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/kubernetes-operations/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/llm-application-dev/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/llm-finetuning/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/machine-learning-ops/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/observability-monitoring/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/payment-processing/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/plugin-eval/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/pptx-deck-creation/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/protect-mcp/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/python-development/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/quantitative-trading/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/reverse-engineering/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/review-agent-governance/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/security-scanning/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/shell-scripting/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/ship-mate/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/signed-audit-trails/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/skill-forge-essentials/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/social-publishing/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/startup-business-analyst/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/superself/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/systems-programming/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/ui-design/skills/*/SKILL.md.

Issue colours

Resolved from a deterministic hash of the owner name. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “Architecture Decision Records”, a leading h1 that duplicated the skill title.

Spec compliance

Every skill satisfies the Agent Skills specification’s frontmatter rules.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Seth Hobson, declaring 94 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /wshobson/agents.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

Comprehensive patterns for creating, maintaining, and managing Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) that capture the context and rationale behind significant technical decisions.

When to Use This Skill

Making significant architectural decisions
Documenting technology choices
Recording design trade-offs
Onboarding new team members
Reviewing historical decisions
Establishing decision-making processes

Core Concepts

1. What is an ADR?

An Architecture Decision Record captures:

Context: Why we needed to make a decision
Decision: What we decided
Consequences: What happens as a result

2. When to Write an ADR

Write ADR	Skip ADR
New framework adoption	Minor version upgrades
Database technology choice	Bug fixes
API design patterns	Implementation details
Security architecture	Routine maintenance
Integration patterns	Configuration changes

3. ADR Lifecycle

Proposed → Accepted → Deprecated → Superseded
              ↓
           Rejected

Before drafting a standard, lightweight, or Y-statement ADR, read decision templates (opens in a new tab).

Before drafting a deprecation ADR or RFC, read deprecation and RFC templates (opens in a new tab).

ADR Management

Directory Structure

docs/
├── adr/
│   ├── README.md           # Index and guidelines
│   ├── template.md         # Team's ADR template
│   ├── 0001-use-postgresql.md
│   ├── 0002-caching-strategy.md
│   ├── 0003-mongodb-user-profiles.md  # [DEPRECATED]
│   └── 0020-deprecate-mongodb.md      # Supersedes 0003

ADR Index (README.md)

# Architecture Decision Records

This directory contains Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for [Project Name].

## Index

| ADR                                   | Title                              | Status     | Date       |
| ------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ---------- | ---------- |
| [0001](0001-use-postgresql.md)        | Use PostgreSQL as Primary Database | Accepted   | 2024-01-10 |
| [0002](0002-caching-strategy.md)      | Caching Strategy with Redis        | Accepted   | 2024-01-12 |
| [0003](0003-mongodb-user-profiles.md) | MongoDB for User Profiles          | Deprecated | 2023-06-15 |
| [0020](0020-deprecate-mongodb.md)     | Deprecate MongoDB                  | Accepted   | 2024-01-15 |

## Creating a New ADR

1. Copy `template.md` to `NNNN-title-with-dashes.md`
2. Fill in the template
3. Submit PR for review
4. Update this index after approval

## ADR Status

- **Proposed**: Under discussion
- **Accepted**: Decision made, implementing
- **Deprecated**: No longer relevant
- **Superseded**: Replaced by another ADR
- **Rejected**: Considered but not adopted

Automation (adr-tools)

# Install adr-tools
brew install adr-tools

# Initialize ADR directory
adr init docs/adr

# Create new ADR
adr new "Use PostgreSQL as Primary Database"

# Supersede an ADR
adr new -s 3 "Deprecate MongoDB in Favor of PostgreSQL"

# Generate table of contents (to a separate file, so the hand-written
# index and guidelines in README.md are not overwritten)
adr generate toc > docs/adr/toc.md

# Link related ADRs
adr link 2 "Complements" 1 "Is complemented by"

Review Process

## ADR Review Checklist

### Before Submission

- [ ] Context clearly explains the problem
- [ ] All viable options considered
- [ ] Pros/cons balanced and honest
- [ ] Consequences (positive and negative) documented
- [ ] Related ADRs linked

### During Review

- [ ] At least 2 senior engineers reviewed
- [ ] Affected teams consulted
- [ ] Security implications considered
- [ ] Cost implications documented
- [ ] Reversibility assessed

### After Acceptance

- [ ] ADR index updated
- [ ] Team notified
- [ ] Implementation tickets created
- [ ] Related documentation updated

Best Practices

Do’s

Write ADRs early - Before implementation starts
Keep them short - 1-2 pages maximum
Be honest about trade-offs - Include real cons
Link related decisions - Build decision graph
Update status - Deprecate when superseded

Don’ts

Don’t change accepted ADRs - Write new ones to supersede
Don’t skip context - Future readers need background
Don’t hide failures - Rejected decisions are valuable
Don’t be vague - Specific decisions, specific consequences
Don’t forget implementation - ADR without action is waste

Architecture Decision Records

When to Use This Skill

Core Concepts

1. What is an ADR?

2. When to Write an ADR

3. ADR Lifecycle

ADR Management

Directory Structure

ADR Index (README.md)

Automation (adr-tools)

Review Process

Best Practices

Do’s

Don’ts

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Architecture Decision Records

When to Use This Skill

Core Concepts

1. What is an ADR?

2. When to Write an ADR

3. ADR Lifecycle

ADR Management

Directory Structure

ADR Index (README.md)

Automation (adr-tools)

Review Process

Best Practices

Do’s

Don’ts

Appendix 64.1–64.2

ReferencesMarkdown · 2 files

About this skill

Trigger

Colophon

Appendix 64.1–64.2

ReferencesMarkdown · 2 files