Architecture Decisions

This page records high-impact technical choices

Architecture decisions in Leci should be explicit because legal data correctness is hard to recover after inconsistent implementation. This page summarizes current accepted decisions and pending decisions that influence roadmap sequencing.

Accepted decisions

DB-first product evolution

Decision: prioritize schema integrity and revision safety before advanced UI/API features.

Why: legal products degrade quickly when data correctness and traceability are weak.

Impact: database and migration artifacts are mature earlier than product endpoints.

Controlled legal text mutation

Decision: legal text edits must flow through leci.apply_revision().

Why: audit history is mandatory for trust, rollback analysis, and governance.

Impact: contributors must avoid direct SQL updates to critical text fields.

Monolithic repository boundary

Decision: keep application, schema, scripts, and docs in one repository at current stage.

Why: team velocity and context-sharing are better while core model is still evolving.

Impact: future decomposition should happen only after API contracts stabilize.

Pending decisions

These decisions remain open and block medium-term planning clarity:

canonical roadmap source of truth (GitHub vs Linear vs hybrid)
MVP search strategy scope (FTS-only vs hybrid from day one)
ingestion depth for first production datasets
MCP/agent integration timing and gating criteria

⚠️ Unverified — Final ownership and decision authority for cross-project sens.legal integrations need explicit confirmation.

ADR workflow

Use docs/adr/ for full decision records and keep this page as the summary index. When an accepted decision changes, add a superseding ADR rather than rewriting historical records.