ADR · Decisions & Governance

Decision Records

Every architectural decision, reviewed, approved, and kept with the context that made it right.

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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
RFCMove checkout to an event bus
What it is

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

A real approval step
Submit a draft to a named reviewer who can accept, reject, or request changes with a checklist. Resubmissions go straight back to the same reviewer.
Nothing slips
Reviewers get in-app notifications and a weekly email digest of decisions waiting on them, so proposals don’t stall.
Writes itself
Start from a Context, Decision, Alternatives, Consequences template that your admins can tailor to how your organization works.
Born from debate
Turn a closed RFC into a draft ADR in one click. The proposal carries over and stays linked, so the discussion behind the decision is never lost.
History you can trust
Every save is versioned. Outdated decisions are marked Superseded or Deprecated, never deleted, so the record stays honest.
Easy to cite
Each decision gets a stable reference like ACME-ADR-0042 that teams can quote in code reviews, tickets, and design docs.

Bring your decisions into one place.

Start free and capture your first decision in minutes, connected to everything else from day one.