---
name: document-a-design-decision
category: write
description: Record a design choice with context, evidence, alternatives, tradeoffs, and review triggers. Use when a consequential or recurring decision should remain understandable after people, constraints, or implementation change.
---

# document-a-design-decision

## Procedure

1. State the decision, date, status, owner, scope, and affected users or systems.
2. Describe the context, user need, constraints, risks, and evidence available at decision time.
3. List credible alternatives, including no change, and why each was accepted or rejected.
4. Record the chosen option and the reasoning without rewriting uncertainty.
5. Document accessibility, privacy, content, technical, operational, and business tradeoffs.
6. Link research, prototypes, tests, metrics, designs, and implementation references.
7. Record dissent, assumptions, dependencies, and evidence gaps.
8. Define success, guardrails, reversal cost, and review triggers.
9. Obtain accountable approval and update status when superseded.

## Guardrails

- Do not invent consensus or erase contributors' disagreement.
- Keep sensitive evidence in controlled sources rather than the broad record.
- A decision record explains a choice; it does not replace validation.

## Done

- A design decision record preserves context, alternatives, evidence, choice, and tradeoffs
- Approval, dissent, assumptions, and links are verified
- Success and review triggers are scheduled