decision-record-discipline SKILL.md skillA
decision-record-discipline from annatchijova/skills is an agent skill: a SKILL.md folder an AI agent loads when a task calls for it.
mdr add annatchijova/skills/decision-record-discipline@git:20260815.cf0de79Pins git:20260815.cf0de79 in mdr.lock. Pin the fingerprint instead.
- Audit grade
- A, 17 of 17 checks passed
- Kind
- SKILL.md skill
- Repository
- annatchijova/skills
- Path
decision-record-discipline/SKILL.md- Versions recorded
- 1
- Latest version
- git:20260815.cf0de79, committed Aug 15, 2026
- Size
- 11,605 bytes
- Repository stars
- 9
- License
- a license file GitHub does not identify
Capture a technical decision while the context still exists — the forces at the time, the alternatives and why each was rejected, the assumption it rests on, its reversibility, and the condition that should reopen it. Use whenever a choice is being made that someone will later have to live with or undo: picking a library, a data model, a protocol, a boundary, a deployment topology; accepting a tradeoff or a known limitation; choosing NOT to build something; adding a workaround, a retry, a…
Collected from public GitHub. Every version is saved exactly as it was and never changes. Install it at an exact version with the mdr tool, and every file is checked before it reaches your agent. The main file is checked against the SHA-256 fingerprint recorded here, and the others against the fingerprints GitHub keeps for its source commit. The automatic checks below grade the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.
What the file says
# Decision Record Discipline Every strange piece of code was once obvious. Someone knew why the retry count is 7, why this service does not call that one directly, why the check nobody understands must run before the write. The knowledge existed for about six weeks and then evaporated, and what remains is a line of code that looks removable. The cost is paid by a stranger — often you, later — who must choose between two bad options: delete it and find out why it was there, or keep it forever out of superstition. `software-archaeology` is the discipline for surviving that situation; **this skill is the discipline that prevents creating it**. A decision record is not documentation of *what* the system does — the code says that, and says it more accurately. It records **what was true when the choice was made, and what would make the choice wrong**. Composes with: `software-archaeology` and `codebase-health-assessment` (fossils are undocumented decisions), `abductive-engineering` (a decision is a hypothesis about the future), `irreversible-action-gate` (one-way vs two-way doors), `claim-provenance-discipline` (that one preserves findings in transit; this one …
Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add annatchijova/skills/decision-record-discipline@sha256:ba57c5bff84cba0fThe line at the top of this page pins the label git:20260815.cf0de79, which is what most people want. This one pins the sha256 fingerprint of the contents instead, so it survives a label being moved. Either way the exact version is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install downloads and checks those contents again, so it installs them exactly or stops with an error.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_if4mcewbbaymv3wk)
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Versions
The registry has recorded 1 version of this file, committed on Aug 15, 2026.
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (11605 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
annatchijova/skills · 9 stars · license a license file GitHub does not identify · pushed 2026-11-02 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_if4mcewbbaymv3wk GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=annatchijova/skills/decision-record-discipline GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/ba57c5bff84cba0f43d7e0cf628bca929cc5f475173139a3a01f315e40690ca8
Your AI assistant does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.
Guides: the SKILL.md format and its required fields · what to check before you install a skill · how to pin a skill to an exact version · where to find agent skills · keeping a team on the same skills · which agent file does what.