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Long-form decision records and design docs.

Updated Jun 9, 2026

Designs

Long-form decision records and design docs that don't fit in source comments or a CHANGELOG - the kind of intent future-us (or future-Claude) will need to reconstruct.

The house style is condensed Oxide-RFD: model + invariants + determinations + tables, light on prose. Each doc stands alone; treat the subtrees as cohesive sets, not chapters that have to be read in order.

Anatomy of an Olly design doc

Every doc in this section is built from the same five canonical sections, in this order:

  • Context - what problem we're solving and why now.
  • Model - the entities, relationships, and operations under discussion (tables and diagrams, not prose).
  • Invariants - the things that must remain true regardless of implementation.
  • Determinations - the decisions we've actually made, each with its rationale.
  • Open questions - what we deliberately haven't decided yet, and what would unblock those choices.

Keep the prose thin. If a determination can be a row in a table, make it a row in a table.

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