/decision-record

name: decision-record
description: "Create a structured narrative record documenting why a design system decision was made — the context, options considered, trade-offs, and rationale. This produces a human-readable decision document, NOT machine-executable rules or constraint files. Trigger when someone says: document this decision, record why we chose, ADR, architecture decision record, capture this decision, why did we pick, what was the reasoning, or anything about preserving the narrative behind a specific design system choice. Do NOT trigger for encoding governance policies as machine-checkable rules — use governance-encoder for that."
references:
  - ../../knowledge-notes/component-governance.md

Decision record

A skill for creating structured decision records for design system choices. Covers component decisions, token architecture choices, tooling selections, governance policies, and any other decision worth recording so future contributors do not have to reverse-engineer the reasoning.

Context

Design systems accumulate decisions faster than they accumulate documentation. The result is a system where the current state is known but the reasoning is not — which means the same debates recur, constraints get ignored because their origin is forgotten, and new team members spend weeks learning by collision what a thirty-minute conversation would have covered.

A decision record does not need to be formal. It needs to be findable and honest. The format below is lightweight enough to write in under twenty minutes and structured enough to be useful when someone reads it twelve months later.

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Step 1: Clarify the decision

Ask for or confirm:

• What was decided? (One clear sentence)
• When was this decided?
• Who was involved in making the decision?
• Is this decision already made, or is it still in progress?

If the decision is in progress, the record still gets written — just with an open status. Decision records for in-progress decisions are often the most valuable, because they capture the thinking before it is lost in the gap between discussion and resolution.

Step 0: Decision trigger checklist

Before writing a record, confirm this decision warrants one. Not every choice needs a formal record — but more decisions warrant records than teams typically capture. Use this checklist:

**Create a decision record if any of these are true:**

• [ ] The decision affects more than one consuming team
• [ ] The decision involves a trade-off where reasonable people could disagree
• [ ] The decision will be referenced during future contribution reviews
• [ ] The decision changes a naming convention, token architecture, or API contract
• [ ] The decision deprecates or removes something from the system
• [ ] Someone asked "why do we do it this way?" and the answer was not documented
• [ ] The same question has come up more than once

**Skip the decision record if all of these are true:**

• The decision affects only one component's internal implementation
• The decision is easily reversible with no consumer impact
• The decision follows an existing, documented convention without exception

When in doubt, write the record. A twenty-minute investment in documentation saves hours of re-discovery and re-debate.

Step 2: Write the record

Use the following six-section structure.

---

Decision record: [title]

**ID:** DR-[number or date-based ID, e.g. DR-2026-03] **Date:** [when the decision was made or this record was created] **Status:** Accepted / Proposed / Superseded / Deprecated **Authors:** [who made or documented this decision]

---

Context

What was the situation that made this decision necessary? What problem was being solved, or what question needed an answer?

Write this as a factual description of the state of the world at the time of the decision. Include any constraints that shaped the decision space — technical, organisational, time-based, or otherwise. Do not frame the context to make the eventual decision look inevitable. Future readers need to understand the real landscape, including the pressures that influenced the outcome.

Two to four sentences is usually enough.

Options considered

List each option that was genuinely evaluated. For each option:

• Name or brief description
• Why it was a viable candidate
• Why it was not chosen (if it was not)

Do not list options that were not seriously considered — this section should reflect the actual decision space, not a post-hoc justification exercise. If only one option was considered, say so and explain why.

The option that was eventually chosen should also appear here, with a note that it was selected and a forward reference to the decision section.

Decision

State the decision in one sentence. Then explain the primary reasoning in two to four sentences.

Be honest about trade-offs. If the chosen option had weaknesses that were accepted, name them. If the decision was influenced by non-technical factors — timelines, team preferences, tooling constraints — include that. Decision records that paper over trade-offs are records of what was decided, not why, which makes them significantly less useful.

Impact assessment

Quantify the impact of this decision. Numbers make a decision record actionable instead of archival.

| Impact dimension | Measurement | |---|---| | Files affected | [count — from grep/search if available] | | Components affected | [count and names] | | Consuming teams affected | [count and names] | | Estimated migration effort | [range in hours, with assumptions] | | Token/API changes required | [count] | | Breaking changes | [yes/no — if yes, list them] | | Timeline to full adoption | [estimate] |

If codebase access is available, run searches to populate these numbers rather than estimating. For example, if the decision is to adopt DTCG token format, count how many token files need restructuring, how many consuming files reference tokens, and how many teams own those f