Principles

Principles

Seven design principles that govern CoherenceOps.

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1. Decisions Are Artifacts

Every significant decision gets a versioned, reviewable, searchable record in the repo where the code lives. Not a Slack message, not a meeting note — a DLR.

2. Assumptions Expire

Every assumption has a half-life. Treat "we believe X" like a cache TTL: valid until it isn't, with a mechanism to detect staleness.

3. Canon Is Protected Memory

Mission, architecture, and public commitments are canon. Changing canon is deliberate, versioned, and logged. Canon doesn't drift silently.

4. Drift Is Normal

Systems drift. The failure isn't drifting — it's not detecting it. CoherenceOps makes drift visible and patchable.

5. Why Retrieval Is the KPI

Can a new team member find out why something was built this way in under 60 seconds? If yes, coherence infrastructure is working.

6. Infrastructure Over Culture

"We have a culture of documentation" is not a system. Templates that prompt, gates that block, scores that measure, loops that correct — that's infrastructure.

7. Minimal Overhead, Maximum Signal

Normal PRs get zero overhead. Major decisions get a DLR. Expired assumptions get a drift signal. That's it.