ADR · Decisions & Governance

Decision Records

Every architectural decision, with the context that made it the right one.

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archforge.app / adr-0042
ADR-0042
Adopt event-driven order processing
Accepted
Payments · Updated Jun 18
Context
Synchronous order calls couple checkout to inventory and payment latency, causing cascading timeouts under peak load.
Decision
Move order processing onto an event bus (Kafka). Checkout emits an OrderPlaced event; downstream services react independently.
Consequences
Decoupled scaling and graceful degradation; in exchange we take on eventual consistency and a saga for compensation.
Linked artifacts
DIAOrder saga — sequence
STDService tiering & SLO policy
What it is

An Architecture Decision Record captures a single choice — the context, the options weighed, the decision, and its consequences — at the moment it’s made. Months later, when someone asks “why on earth did we do it this way?”, the answer is one click away instead of lost to staff turnover.

Status lifecycle
Proposed → Accepted → Superseded, with the full history preserved. Superseded decisions link forward to what replaced them.
Linked context
Each ADR connects to the diagrams, services, and standards it touches, so impact is never a mystery.
Lightweight by design
A consistent template that takes minutes to fill in — short enough that people actually write them.

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