# Decision records

Numbered records of decisions that constrain later work, kept separately from the documents they
affect.

architecture.md lists open questions and roadmap.md lists
phases. Neither is a good home for *why* something was settled: a resolved question tends to be
edited down to its answer, and the reasoning — including the options rejected and what would
reopen the matter — disappears with the edit. That reasoning is the part worth keeping, because
the next person to ask "why not just use X?" deserves an answer better than "we didn't."

Each record states the decision, what was measured, what was chosen, what was rejected and why,
and **what would reverse it**. The last is the important one. A decision with no stated reversal
condition is a belief.

Records are append-only, like everything else here. A superseded decision gets a new record that
says so; it is not rewritten.

| # | Decision | Status |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [0001](0001-anchor-substrate.md) | The anchor is an interface; a witnessed transparency log is the default, chain anchoring a periodic backstop | Accepted |
| [0002](0002-token-is-conditional.md) | The token is conditional on permissionless staking, not assumed by the design | Accepted |
| [0003](0003-witness-policy-is-the-readers.md) | The witness policy belongs to the reader; a log does not declare its own witnesses | Accepted |
| [0004](0004-one-author-plays-every-role.md) | One author plays designer, implementer, and adversary for the prototype; independence is required before deployment under licence | Accepted, with an expiry |
| [0005](0005-pooling-is-an-optimisation-never-a-gate.md) | Publishers may share one anchored root through a pool; a member sealed out anchors directly, and no accountability moves | Accepted |