adr-kit

Architecture decisions your AI coding agents actually follow.

Coding agent installing ADR Kit? Read INSTALL-AGENT.md and stop there. It is the short, client-neutral runbook for detection, preview, installation, project initialization, and verification across native and portable agent setups.

Agent choosing an ADR format? Run python bin/adr profiles --format json. MADR is the preferred default. If the user chooses another format, accept only a returned profile id and use its returned shipped template path. ADR Kit currently ships complete templates for madr, nygard, and canonical; never invent a profile name or synthesize an unregistered template.

Agent finding the ADRs for a task? Read docs/adr/ADR-INDEX.json first, or run python bin/adr-context --format json "<task>". Use its status, scope, relationship graph, relevance signals, and source paths to shortlist records; then open the referenced Markdown ADRs before applying a constraint. Regenerate all indexes with python bin/adr-index docs/adr and verify them with python bin/adr-index --check docs/adr. Never hand-edit either generated index.

adr-kit turns Architecture Decision Records from passive documentation into active guardrails. Your agent gets the relevant decisions injected while it codes, every commit is checked against the accepted decisions, and a guardian watches for decisions that go stale. One toolkit covers the whole lifecycle: capture, enforce, maintain, retire.

Ships separate integration payloads for Claude Code CLI, OpenAI Codex CLI, and the standalone GitHub Copilot CLI. The generated client support matrix distinguishes simulated contract coverage from release-candidate native certification. All three include English skill metadata, the same deterministic engines, and quiet-by-default lifecycle behavior: routine successful hooks do not print progress, while relevant ADR context is delivered to the agent and actionable warnings remain available. The engines are dependency-free Python 3.10+ (stdlib only, no build step, no API key required for any default path).

Pre-1.0: functional and in daily use, but conventions may still evolve before v1.0.0. Pin a tag if you need stability across upgrades.

Audit posture: the 2026-07-18 source audit drove fail-closed enforcement, exact staged-snapshot handling, transaction-safe lifecycle/state updates, and cross-platform packaging fixes. ADR Kit remains a development guardrail, not a sandbox, branch-protection replacement, or sole merge control.

Why

AI coding agents are fast, confident, and have no memory of why your system is built the way it is. Left alone, they will cheerfully reintroduce the database driver you migrated away from, bypass the repository layer you standardized on, and make new architectural decisions without telling anyone. Human teams have the same failure mode, just slower.

ADRs are the established answer: short markdown files in your repo that record the problem, the decision, the alternatives rejected, and the consequences accepted. What was always missing is enforcement. A decision nobody re-reads is a decision nobody follows.

adr-kit closes that loop three times over:

1. Before the agent edits: the decisions relevant to the task are ranked and injected as context.
2. While the agent edits: a hook nudges it the moment a change touches files governed by a decision.
3. When the work lands: declarative rules from each ADR are checked against the diff at commit time and in CI, deterministically and key-free.

And because decisions age, a periodic guardian flags drift between code and decisions, retirement candidates, and decisions that were made but never recorded.

Install

Coding agents should follow INSTALL-AGENT.md. The sections below are the human-oriented quick reference.

Install every detected CLI

From a cloned checkout:

python scripts/install-agent-envs.py --detect-only
python scripts/install-agent-envs.py --project-root /path/to/project

The installer verifies real executable and version output for claude, codex, and the standalone copilot CLI. It installs ADR Kit through every detected client's native plugin API on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Before touching a client, it validates the complete source and the Python 3.10+ interpreter that is running the installer. It prepares a persistent user-local marketplace with that exact interpreter embedded in the Codex and Copilot MCP configuration, then completes a real MCP initialize/tools-list smoke test. Use --clients codex,copilot, --dry-run, or --source /path/to/adr-kit for explicit and automated installs. The post-install format scan is read-only: it reports deterministic preview commands or guided migration steps and never rewrites an ADR.

Register ADR Kit in a project

Preview and apply the shared three-client project guidance separately from native plugin registration:

python scripts/setup-project.py --project-root /path/to/project --dry-run
python scripts/setup-project.py --project-root /path/to/project
python scripts/settings.py --project-root /path/to/project show

Setup writes generated .adr-kit/ADR-guide.md, adds independent owned blocks to AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and .github/copilot-instructions.md, and installs the deterministic pre-commit gate by default. It preserves all bytes outside the marker blocks. An existing generated guide is backed up before replacement; project-specific guidance belongs in user-owned .adr-kit/ADR-guide.local.md.

Settings use global defaults with per-project overrides. The effective output shows the value and source of every option. Disable or re-enable pre-commit, for example:

python scripts/settings.py --project-root /path/to/project set pre_commit.enabled false
python scripts/setup-project.py --project-root /path/to/project
python scripts/settings.py --project-root /path/to/project set pre_commit.enabled true
python scripts/setup-project.py --project-root /path/to/project

Settings also cover verified stable updates, trigger/frequency, offline and pinned operation, per-client opt-outs, doctor repair/check-only policy, and local versus paid/cloud judgment. No provider or model tag is a fallback default. --probe-models performs a bounded local identity check without invoking a model; zero or multiple candidates remain visibly unavailable or ambiguous. Paid/cloud judgment remains explicit opt-in, and no model runs in a hook hot path.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add rvdbreemen/adr-kit
/plugin install adr-kit@rvdbreemen-adr-kit
/reload-plugins
/adr-kit:init

The first three install the plugin. The fourth is the one-shot per-project bootstrap: it wires a marker-owned pointer into CLAUDE.md (the shared guide lands at .adr-kit/ADR-guide.md), audits your existing codebase for decisions already in effect (the database you chose, the framework you committed to, the patterns you standardized on), walks you through recording them as Accepted ADRs in batches, and installs the pre-commit enforcement hook. Idempotent: safe to re-run.

That is the whole setup. From the next session on, your agent knows the decisions, gets nudged when it touches them, and receives a local check when it commits.

Prefer a lighter start? Run scripts/setup-project.py --dry-run, then apply it. This installs the shared guide, three independent managed instruction blocks, and (by default) pre-commit without running the architecture audit. Disable pre-commit first through adr-kit:settings when guidance-only setup is required.

The Claude integration keeps only its manifest under .claude-plugin/. Plugin-root skills/, hooks/hooks.json, .mcp.json, agents, and bundled executables provide 15 workflows, six bounded hooks, and the five-tool MCP server.

OpenAI Codex

codex plugin marketplace add rvdbreemen/adr-kit
codex plugin add adr-kit@rvdbreemen-adr-kit-codex
codex mcp list

Codex does not use Claude's /adr-kit:... slash-command syntax. ADR Kit workflows appear as namespaced skills: open /skills, or invoke $adr-kit:context, $adr-kit:judge, $adr-kit:lint, and the other skills. The separate codex/ distribution contains all 15 workflows and the key-free five-tool MCP server. See the official Codex skills and plugin contracts.

Standalone GitHub Copilot CLI

copilot plugin marketplace add rvdbreemen/adr-kit
copilot plugin install adr-kit@rvdbreemen-adr-kit-copilot
copilot plugin list
copilot mcp list

This targets @github/copilot invoked as copilot, not gh copilot or VS Code agent mode. The separate copilot/ distribution follows GitHub's Copilot plugin contract and installs 15 skills plus the same key-free MCP server. Open /skills inside Copilot CLI to discover ADR Kit workflows. Its lower-camel hook package supplies proactive session/task context and PostToolUse; pre-commit remains the edit-enforcement backstop.

If an older installation reports that adr-mcp is missing under the active project (for example <project>/bin/adr-mcp), refresh both marketplace and plugin, then reload MCP servers:

copilot plugin marketplace update rvdbreemen-adr-kit-copilot
copilot plugin update adr-kit
copilot mcp get adr-kit

In copilot mcp get adr-kit, the executable argument must be ${PLUGIN_ROOT}/bin/adr-mcp; cwd remains . so ADR Kit serves the active project. Start a new Copilot session or run /mcp reload in the current one. Agents should use these native update commands instead of editing the installed .mcp.json or replacing ${PLUGIN_ROOT} with a machine-specific path.

Portable Agent Skills and MCP clients

INSTALL.md documents the native plugin layouts and portable fallbacks.

On top of the native installs, any compatible local stdio MCP client can connect to the bundled MCP server for enforcement and context tools.

The CLI engines under bin/ require Python 3.10+, with no pip install. The automatic installer embeds the absolute interpreter that launched it, so Windows python.exe and Unix python3-only installations need no manual MCP manifest edit. See INSTALL.md.

Upgrading

Three layers, each with a clear path:

• The plugin itself: updates through the normal Claude Code plugin update flow. The engines (judge, guardian, context ranker) always resolve the newest installed version automatically, so hooks you installed earlier keep running current code without any action.
• Copied artifacts (the git pre-commit wrapper, the project-scoped settings entry, the guide file): these freeze at install time by nature. Since v0.27.0 they carry version stamps, and the guardian tells you at session start when one lags the installed plugin (wrapper: ... STALE). Run /adr-kit:upgrade and they are refreshed idempotently; the same command still handles the legacy v0.11 to v0.12 footprint migration. You can inspect the state any time with bin/adr-guardian artifacts.
• Existing ADR sets: MADR and Nygard are first-class selectable profiles, and the older adr-kit canonical profile remains valid without rewriting. bin/adr-migrate --plan docs/adr detects metadata/filename upgrades and common external formats without writing. It prints deterministic dry-run commands where safe and guided migration instructions otherwise.

The lifecycle: capture, guard, maintain

Capture decisions (and stop rationalizing them away)

• /adr-kit:adr loads the full authoring guide. Its two signature disciplines, borrowed and battle-tested from earlier skills (see Credits):
  • Anti-rationalization guards: a table of the excuses agents and humans use to skip writing an ADR ("it is obvious", "I will document it later", "the code speaks for itself"), each with a counter-argument. Fires before the decision goes unrecorded.
  • Four verification gates: Completeness, Evidence, Clarity, Consistency. An ADR cannot flip from Proposed to Accepted until it passes all four, and a reviewer can block on a single named gate ("fails Evidence, add measurements").
• /adr-kit:grill turns incomplete knowledge into a useful decision record. It reads repository facts first, labels claims as observed, human-stated, inferred, or unknown, and asks one unresolved decision question at a time. It can complete an existing Proposed ADR, reconstruct a decision from a PR, git range, chat log, or document, and revalidate an older decision. Source material is evidence, never acceptance authority.
• bin/adr-readiness is the deterministic companion to grilling. It classifies a record, separates mechanical fixes from human decisions, resolves explicit implementation links, and emits stable human, JSON, or GitHub output without invoking a model or changing lifecycle state. See the ADR Grilling user guide for complete subject, reconstruction, resume, queue, acceptance, and CI examples.
• adr-generator agent scaffolds the ADR for you: decision tree for "does this need an ADR?", a proposed ## Enforcement block when the decision has a code surface, and a post-write quality check.
• /adr-kit:init's audit mines an existing codebase for decisions already in effect, so you start with a real decision log instead of an empty directory.
• /adr-kit:review audits a finished branch or PR: it enforces the existing ADRs against the committed range diff and, crucially, hunts for new decisions the branch introduced but never recorded, reading both the diff and the stated intent (commit messages, PR description), because decisions are often confessed in prose while the diff looks like plumbing. Found candidates are deduped against your existing set and drafted as Proposed, never auto-accepted.
• bin/adr-suggest (opt-in) runs the same missing-decision detector per commit and prints a one-line nudge. It never blocks.

Guard the agent while it works

• Context lookup (/adr-kit:context, bin/adr-context): give it a topic ("mqtt discovery", "caching") and it returns the 3 to 5 most relevant ADRs with path, status, format, one-line decision, enforcement scope, declared relationships, invariant metadata, and five explainable ranking signals. Proposed ADRs can appear, so treat the result as a shortlist and open each source ADR before applying it.

• In-flight nudges (bin/adr-watch, v0.24.0+): a PostToolUse hook fires after every Edit/Write in Claude Code and checks the touched file against the Accepted ADRs (Enforcement path globs first, keyword relevance second):

  [adr-watch] ADR-007 (no direct DB calls outside repository layer) may apply to src/db/foo.py
  

  Deterministic, key-free, under 100ms, never blocks, and a per-session cooldown keeps it from nagging. This closes the gap between session-start context and commit-time enforcement: the agent is corrected while the file is still open.

• Edit-tier injection (bin/adr-watch --pre-edit, v0.31.0+): a PreToolUse hook fires before every Edit/Write and injects the top-ranked governing ADR's ## Decision text (bounded to a token budget), so the agent honours the decision as it writes, not after. The PostToolUse nudge above stays as a confirmation backstop. Same deterministic matcher, key-free, exits 0. Formalised in ADR-004.

• Decision indexes (bin/adr-index): generates two deterministic, timestamp-free views from the same format-aware records. docs/adr/ADR-INDEX.md is the compact one-row-per-ADR session map imported by CLAUDE.md; docs/adr/ADR-INDEX.json is the versioned agent graph containing semantic metadata and sorted declared relationship edges. Markdown ADRs remain authoritative.

• Commit-time enforcement (bin/adr-judge + pre-commit hook): every ADR can carry a fenced JSON ## Enforcement block with declarative rules (forbid_pattern, forbid_import, require_pattern, each optionally scoped by path_glob). On every git commit the hook runs those rules against the staged diff with file:line citations. Fast, deterministic, no LLM, no API key. ADRs whose rules are too nuanced for regex can set llm_judge: true for an opt-in model-reviewed pass instead.

• PR-time enforcement in CI: the same judge can run as a composite GitHub Action or through the pre-commit framework, giving local and CI workflows the same deterministic rule set. See CI integration and the audit notice above for current limitations.

• Audited escape hatch: hotfix has to land despite a FAIL? ADR_KIT_OVERRIDE="ADR-003: hotfix for incident 42" git commit ... downgrades that one ADR's violations to loud warnings, refuses an empty reason, logs the override locally, and pairs with an ADR-Override: commit trailer convention you can reconcile later with adr-judge --audit-overrides. Guardrails with a paper trail instead of --no-verify folklore.

Maintain the decision log (decisions age; the kit notices)

• The Guardian (bin/adr-guardian, /adr-kit:guardian): a session-start staleness detector with two tiers. The cheap tier (daily, free) checks for code drift against Enforcement rules, retirement candidates, lint health, and refreshes a bounded Proposed-ADR work queue. SessionStart reads only that local 24-hour cache and offers at most three next actions; it never scans or starts an interview in the hook. The LLM tier (bi-weekly, asks before spending) hunts for missing ADRs and runs the full model-reviewed audit. Findings get mixed responses by type: drift is surfaced loudly with file:line, missing decisions are offered for authoring, stale ADRs get a retirement draft for review. Never runs in the background, never spends without asking.
  • Team mode (v0.22.0+): a weekly CI cron sweep maintains a single "ADR guardian audit" tracking issue (created on findings, updated, closed when clean) so the whole team sees ADR health, not just whoever opened a session today. Copy templates/github-workflows/adr-guardian-audit.yml into your repo.
  • Trend history (v0.29.0+): every sweep appends to a 52-entry trend log, and the nudge shows the delta: trend: drift 2 -> 0, retire 1 -> 2, coverage 40% -> 45%. A KPI with memory, not a snapshot.
• Health dashboard (bin/adr-status): totals, status breakdown, average age, enforcement health, retirement candidates, and since v0.29.0 the Enforcement coverage percentage of your Accepted ADRs. JSON, markdown, or table.
• Quality scoring (bin/adr-quality): grades every ADR A to D across the four gates (Completeness 40%, Evidence 20%, Clarity 20%, Consistency 20%), with per-gate issue codes. Exits 1 below grade B, so you can gate CI on ADR quality.
• Generated index refresh (bin/adr-index docs/adr/): atomically rebuilds the sentinel-owned docs/adr/README.md block plus ADR-INDEX.md and ADR-INDEX.json. --check exits non-zero when any generated view is missing or stale, or duplicate ADR ids exist. Use --format graph --adr-dir docs/adr to inspect the graph without writing.
• Local doctor (bin/adr-doctor): fast mode checks ADR/index state, settings, generated artifacts, managed guidance, Claude/Codex/Copilot identity, MCP launchers, and cached model health without login or model invocation. Default mode repairs only deterministic ADR Kit-owned drift; --check is read-only, --fix permits backed-up managed rewrites, and --deep adds bounded native, MCP, and local-model probes. See troubleshooting.
• Lifecycle commands (bin/adr, v0.32.0+): local propose, accept, supersede, reject, and document commands update frontmatter, the Status section, append-only Status History, reciprocal supersession links, and then refresh the generated README index.
• After-the-fact acceptance (bin/adr document + bin/adr accept --auto): mark already-shipped behavior with documents_shipped:true and local verified_in pointers, then verify strict lint, quality, and human readiness. The default assist mode reports eligibility without mutating; acceptance requires --confirm after the engineer reviews the packet. Existing projects that intentionally require the legacy automatic transition can explicitly configure lifecycle.auto_accept.mode: "auto".
• Retirement audit (/adr-kit:retire, bin/adr-retire): ranks Accepted ADRs for retirement using four deterministic signals (status age, technology removal, supersession, policy drift). Read-only; a recommendation always needs a human.
• Dependency graph (/adr-kit:related, bin/adr-related): who does ADR-007 point at, and who points back? Outbound and inbound edges per declared reference kind, with dangling links flagged. The same normalized edges are available repository-wide in ADR-INDEX.json.
• Guided supersession (/adr-kit:supersede): replace a decision without rewriting history. The skill shows the dependency graph first, drafts the successor as Proposed, and asks before changing lifecycle state. The lifecycle CLI enforces legal transitions and all acceptance gates, rejects competing chains, and updates both records plus generated indexes in one rollback-safe transaction.
• Team-safe numbering (bin/adr-renumber, v0.23.0+): two branches both claim ADR-043, both pass CI in isolation, the collision appears after merge. The lint gate fails the duplicate with both files named, and adr-renumber moves one to a free number, dry-run first, updating every cross-reference in the set (and never touching ADR-0430 when you renumber ADR-043).
• Lint (/adr-kit:lint, bin/adr-lint): validates every ADR against the gates with file:line citations and three result tiers (PASS, ADVISORY, FAIL). Every run also emits read-only migration notices for supported legacy files, Y-Statements, Tyree/Akerman records, arc42 decision sections, hybrids, and unknown ADR shapes. It provides an exact deterministic preview when safe and guided review otherwise; it never migrates automatically. The CLI form is deterministic and CI-ready; --strict enables canonical frontmatter validation, local verified_in evidence resolution, reciprocal supersession checks, and binding gate lookup for CI. The skill form adds model judgement on the Evidence and Clarity gates.

MCP server: bin/adr-mcp

A deliberately thin MCP server (stdio, newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0, Python stdlib only, zero dependencies) that exposes the guardrails to Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, or another compatible local stdio MCP client. Five tools, all key-free:

# Claude Code
claude mcp add adr-kit -- python /path/to/adr-kit/bin/adr-mcp --root "$(pwd)"

For another stdio client, place the following in its MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adr-kit": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/path/to/adr-kit/bin/adr-mcp", "--root", "/path/to/your/project"]
    }
  }
}

Why only five tools? Contrast is the feature: adr-kit ships the smallest surface that carries the guardrails and readiness facts, and nothing that needs an API key. Grilling itself stays in the client session so an engineer or architect remains part of the decision.

Slash commands

/adr and /adr-kit:adr invoke the same skill; the prefix form is canonical.

The Auto-invocable column reflects the shipped skill metadata. Mutating skills and several deliberate read-only commands set disable-model-invocation: true; judge, review, and guardian currently do not. Model invocation does not by itself authorize file mutation, and cost-bearing guardian work still follows its confirmation/configuration rules.

ADR conventions

• Filename: ADR-XXX-kebab-case-title.md, 3-digit zero-padded, in docs/adr/.
• Heading: # ADR-XXX Title.
• Body profile: MADR is the default. Nygard and the legacy canonical adr-kit profile are selectable. Tools map their headings to shared semantic roles instead of assuming one spelling.
• Status values: Proposed, Accepted, Deprecated, Superseded by ADR-YYY, Amended by ADR-YYY.
• Status history: an append-only YAML block records every transition (date, status, changed_by, reason, changed_via); the lint audit gate validates chronology and agreement with ## Status.
• Canonical frontmatter: bin/adr-migrate can add a local metadata block above legacy ADR prose without changing the body. The schema is schemas/adr-frontmatter.schema.json and carries the fields agents need for higher-quality local recall:
  • id, title, status, date: the stable identity and lifecycle state.
  • binding, gate: whether the decision constrains future work and which consuming-repo gate proves it.
  • documents_shipped, verified_in: evidence for after-the-fact ADRs that document already-shipped behavior.
  • supersedes, superseded_by: lifecycle links that tools can check for reciprocity.
  • format: optional per-file madr, nygard, or canonical discriminator; legacy files are detected by headings.

Create the next Proposed record with:

python bin/adr profiles
python bin/adr new "Short imperative title" --adr-dir docs/adr
python bin/adr new "Concise Nygard record" --profile nygard --adr-dir docs/adr

Then finish the decision deliberately:

/adr-kit:grill ADR-NNN

The grill loop records each answer, leaves unresolved items under ## Open Questions, and ends with an acceptance packet. Only an explicit same-session yes authorizes the lifecycle command:

python bin/adr accept ADR-NNN --changed-by "<engineer>" --reason "<decision>"

If the session stops early, the valid Proposed ADR and /adr-kit:grill ADR-NNN are the resumable state. A PR, commit, chat log, or source document can supply evidence but can never imply acceptance.

The strict filename contract remains uppercase ADR- plus a three-digit number. Existing canonical records remain valid. adr profiles is the authoritative pre-made profile catalog: each entry includes its installed template path and availability. If a user selects a non-default format, use only an id from that catalog. A profile cannot be selected merely by adding an arbitrarily named template file.

Choose a profile by how much authoring structure the team wants:

Why MADR is the default

MADR is the default because it is the most agent-friendly of the commonly used lightweight ADR formats, not because adr-kit claims it has the largest global usage. No authoritative format census exists. This is an agent-reliability choice. In adr-kit's weighted evaluation, MADR scored 4.52/5: its explicit problem, drivers, options, outcome, pros/cons, and confirmation slots reduce how much an agent must infer from free-form prose. Nygard remains selectable because it has the strongest concise-format and public-tooling signal. The canonical profile remains selectable so existing adr-kit repositories never need a forced rewrite. The complete rationale and compatibility decision are recorded in ADR-005.

All three retain the same lifecycle metadata, status history, relationships, references, and Enforcement contract.

Configuration

All configuration lives in one optional file: docs/adr/.adr-kit.json (annotated sample: examples/.adr-kit.sample.json, schema: schemas/adr-kit-config.schema.json). Everything has safe defaults; you only add what you want to change.

Lint policy: strict on new, advisory on legacy

{
  "strict_from": "ADR-042",
  "ignore": ["ADR-001", "ADR-007"],
  "severity": {
    "completeness": "advisory_before_strict_from",
    "audit": "always_strict",
    "evidence": "advisory_before_strict_from",
    "clarity": "always_advisory",
    "consistency": "always_strict"
  },
  "template": {
    "profile": "madr"
  }
}

• strict_from: first ADR id on which the gates are enforced strictly; older ADRs lint in advisory mode.
• severity: per-gate override (always_strict, always_advisory, advisory_before_strict_from). Audit and consistency stay strict by default: broken status chains and duplicate numbers are real bugs regardless of age.
• template.profile: operational creation default: madr (default), nygard, or canonical. These are the shipped profile catalog; --profile overrides one adr new call.
• template.required_sections: advanced lint-only heading override. It does not register a new selectable profile, create a template, or add semantic role parsing.
• Per-file markers for one-off grandfathering: <!-- adr-kit-lint: skip -->, skip <gate>[, ...], or advisory anywhere in an ADR.

LLM passes: always opt-in, never surprise cost

{
  "judge":   { "llm_enabled": false, "llm_model": "claude-sonnet-4-6", "llm_timeout_seconds": 120 },
  "suggest": { "enabled": false },
  "guardian": {
    "enabled": true,
    "drift_stale_days": 1,
    "llm_stale_days": 14,
    "nudge_cooldown_hours": 24,
    "llm_autorun": false
  },
  "watch": { "enabled": true, "cooldown_hours": 4 }
}

• The pre-commit hook's declarative pass is always on and free. The LLM judge pass is opt-in (judge.llm_enabled, or ADR_KIT_LLM=1 per commit; ADR_KIT_NO_LLM=1 to suppress). A flock guard serializes LLM passes across parallel commits.
• suggest.enabled (or ADR_KIT_SUGGEST=1 per commit) turns on the advisory missing-decision nudge; it never blocks and silently skips on any failure.
• The guardian's cheap tier is free and daily; the LLM tier is bi-weekly and always asks first unless you set llm_autorun: true (not recommended; see ADR-001 in this repo).
• watch tunes the in-flight nudges; cooldown_hours: 0 disables the cooldown, enabled: false silences the watcher.

State lives in docs/adr/.adr-kit-state.json: gitignored, per-machine, atomic writes, safe across parallel sessions.

CI integration

Proposed-ADR readiness: adr-readiness (composite action)

Copy templates/github-workflows/adr-readiness.yml, or invoke the action directly after a full-history checkout:

- uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0
- uses: rvdbreemen/adr-kit/.github/actions/adr-readiness@main
  with:
    adr-dir: docs/adr

The action compares the pull request's exact base and head SHAs, writes a sanitized step summary plus annotations, and exports stable counts and ADR ids. It exits 1 only when changed implementation is explicitly linked to a Proposed ADR. Architecture-sensitive changes without a proven link are advisory; Accepted, Rejected, and Superseded ADRs never block this readiness gate. Missing refs or runtime failures exit 2. It is stdlib-only, key-free, comment-free, and model-free.

PR enforcement: bin/adr-judge (composite action)

# .github/workflows/adr-judge.yml
name: ADR enforcement
on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [main]
jobs:
  adr-judge:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0        # both sides of the diff must be available
      - uses: rvdbreemen/adr-kit/.github/actions/[email protected]
        with:
          adr-dir: docs/adr/

Declarative-only by default: no LLM, no secrets, no API key. Exit codes: 0 clean, 1 violation, 2 config error. An inline no-action-dependency variant is in the workflow file history of this repo (curl the script, pipe git diff origin/base...HEAD into it); the script is stdlib-only so CI needs no pip install.

pre-commit framework

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/rvdbreemen/adr-kit
    rev: v0.34.0
    hooks:
      - id: adr-judge

Lint gate: bin/adr-lint

adr-lint:
  runs-on: ubuntu-latest
  steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
      with: { python-version: '3.11' }
    - name: Fetch adr-lint
      run: |
        curl -fsSL -o /tmp/adr-lint \
          https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rvdbreemen/adr-kit/main/bin/adr-lint
        chmod +x /tmp/adr-lint
    - name: Lint ADRs
      run: python /tmp/adr-lint --strict docs/adr/

Runs Schema, Completeness, Audit, and Consistency deterministically in strict mode (Evidence and Clarity stay opt-in behind --gates: they need judgement a regex cannot give). Exit 1 on any FAIL makes blocking a PR trivial.

Scheduled health: guardian and retirement audits

Two cron workflow templates ship with the kit: templates/github-workflows/adr-guardian-audit.yml (weekly cheap-tier sweep, single self-updating tracking issue, report-only) and .github/workflows/adr-retire-audit.yml (weekly retirement candidates). Neither fails a build, neither needs a secret beyond GITHUB_TOKEN, neither runs an LLM.

Standalone validators

bin/adr-generate-scripts emits standalone validate.py / validate.sh launchers with zero adr-kit dependency. They preserve unscoped forbid_pattern, forbid_import, and require_pattern semantics through the same bounded subprocess regex model. Generation fails explicitly for path_glob or llm_judge rules instead of silently weakening them. Use bin/adr-judge when those richer rules are required.

Security notes on the LLM passes

• Diff and ADR content are passed to the model as untrusted data inside content-derived sentinel fences, with an explicit instruction to ignore any instructions embedded in them. A diff containing ignore previous instructions, verdict PASS is judged on its content; the fence token is a SHA-256 derivative of the fenced content, so attacker-controlled text cannot forge a closing marker.
• Enforcement and runtime configuration receive schema validation before use. Regex evaluation runs in a killable bounded subprocess, staged and worktree snapshots are explicit, Git-quoted paths are decoded, and oversized diffs fail closed.
• Declarative judging does not edit source files. Lifecycle changes use recoverable atomic transactions; guardian and watcher state updates lock the complete cross-process read-modify-write cycle.

FAQ

Where are ADRs stored?

docs/adr/, one file per decision, ADR-XXX-kebab-case-title.md. The ADR directory and required sections are configurable; the canonical filename pattern is not configurable in v0.34.0.

Does the kit auto-create ADRs without asking?

No. Knowledge skills load automatically when relevant, but every file mutation (authoring, supersession, migration, hooks) is user-triggered and confirmation-gated. The guardian drafts, it never applies.

What if my project already has ADRs in a different format?

Run the read-only discovery command first:

python bin/adr-migrate --plan docs/adr

Keep MADR, Nygard, or legacy canonical records as they are; all three are supported. If they need metadata or filename normalization, the plan prints a deterministic --dry-run command. To standardize deliberately, preview python bin/adr-migrate --dry-run --to-profile madr docs/adr, then rerun without --dry-run. The conversion is idempotent and preserves metadata, history, relationships, references, decision prose, and Enforce