ADR NNNN: Title
Status: Proposed | Accepted | Superseded by ADR NNNN — link it when you write that line
Context
Section titled “Context”What forced a decision. The constraint, the conflict, or the failure that made the status quo untenable. Written so someone who was not here understands the pressure without needing the history.
Decision
Section titled “Decision”What was decided, in the present tense, as a property of the system. Specific enough to be violated — a decision nobody could breach is a description, not a decision.
Consequences
Section titled “Consequences”What follows, including the costs. A consequence that is only an advantage is an advertisement. State what this makes harder, what it forecloses, and what now has to be maintained.
Alternatives rejected
Section titled “Alternatives rejected”Each with the reason it lost. This is the section that stops the decision being relitigated from scratch, and the one a reader reaches for when the constraints change.
Verification
Section titled “Verification”The command, test or audit that would fail if the decision were violated — or an explicit statement that there is none, and what that leaves unguarded. A decision with no check is a decision that drifts.
Security and privacy
Section titled “Security and privacy”Trust boundaries touched, data at rest or in transit, and what an attacker gains if this is wrong. “None” is an acceptable answer; an absent section is not.