adr-documentation

# ADR Documentation

## Overview

### What are ADRs?

Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) are lightweight documents that capture important architectural decisions along with their context and consequences. They serve as a historical record of why certain choices were made, helping teams avoid revisiting settled debates and providing context for future developers.

**Key characteristics:**
- **Immutable**: Once accepted, ADRs are rarely modified (supersede instead)
- **Context-rich**: Capture the environment and constraints at decision time
- **Outcome-focused**: Document what was decided and why
- **Alternative-aware**: Show what options were considered and rejected

### Why Document Decisions?

**Context Preservation:**
- Future team members understand *why* things are the way they are
- Avoid "we've always done it this way" without knowing the reason
- Preserve institutional knowledge across team changes

**Onboarding:**
- New developers can read ADR history to understand system evolution
- Reduces repetitive explanations of architectural choices
- Provides learning path through project decisions

**Avoiding Repeat Mistakes:**
- Document why certain approaches were rejected
- Prevent re-proposing failed solutions
- Learn from past trade-offs

**Alignment:**
- Create shared understanding across team
- Resolve disagreements with documented rationale
- Enable asynchronous decision-making

### When to Write an ADR

Write an ADR when:
- **Significant architectural choices**: Microservices vs monolith, event-driven vs request/response
- **Technology selections**: Database choice, framework adoption, language decisions
- **Pattern decisions**: State management approach, authentication strategy, error handling patterns
- **Breaking changes**: API redesigns, data model changes, migration strategies
- **Performance-critical decisions**: Caching strategies, optimization approaches, scalability patterns
- **Security-related choices**: Authentication methods, encryption strat