Project Documents

Keep understandable, current project knowledge without duplicating it. Keep documentation where your project already has it, or use the supplied Documents convention.

• Package ID: project-documents
• Depends on: Workflow Support
• Startup visibility: This package adds one entry line in Crystallized Memory for Documents. Workflow Support also adds the use-workflow entry in Skills. The category entrypoint, records, recipes, and Templates stay on demand.

These counts describe this package's own entries when their parent routes expose them in Entries and are read. Required packages add their own entries. Linked files stay on demand unless selected or required.

Install

Package files follow your installation choices. Essentials leaves out Templates, so Extension starters are skipped. Restore the Templates category if you want those starters.

From your installed Open Forge workspace, preview the package and its required packages:

open-forge extension install project-documents --dry-run

Review the plan. Then apply it:

open-forge extension install project-documents

The CLI installs required packages from the same catalogue. See the Extension guide for scripts using --automatic, updates, removal, or a local source.

Why it exists

Knowledge scattered across decisions, chats, and code comments has to be pieced together every time someone needs it. A Document explains one subject as it is now, in one place. Documents stack from an overview at the top down to the detail, and each can link to the Decisions that shaped it. Decisions come from Planning, or from wherever your workspace already keeps rationale. The document flow shows how they fit together.

The Vision and Architecture workflows add one discipline that matters for both: a proposal stays a proposal until you accept it. Your existing documentation can stay where it is. This package offers a convention, not a new home you have to migrate to.

What it installs

.agents/
  memory/crystallized/documents/
    _documents.md                  <- Memory category: current explanations
  skills/use-workflow/references/project-documents/
    _project-documents.md          <- recipe scope entrypoint
    vision.md                      <- workflow recipe
    architecture.md                <- workflow recipe
  templates/documents/
    _documents.md                  <- Template category entrypoint
    document.md  vision.md  architecture.md
    principles.md  maintenance-contract.md

What each file is for

memory/crystallized/documents/_documents.md

Kind: Memory category (Crystallized). Used when: work needs accepted current knowledge.

A Document is one coherent, current explanation of a subject, written so readers don't have to piece its meaning together from past decisions. When a Document names another source as authoritative, it follows that source instead of duplicating it.

Documents are kept top-down. Top-level Documents give an overview of the whole and summarize each narrower Document they link to. A narrower Document explains its own part in more detail and links back up. A Document links to a Decision when that Decision's reasoning helps. When accepted knowledge changes a narrower Document, the rules ask for the summaries above it that no longer match to be updated too. The document flow shows it with an example.

The Vision recipe: vision.md

Kind: workflow recipe. Used when: clarifying what something is for.

Goal: a proposed or accepted Vision covering purpose, audience, core value, first useful version, boundaries, and observable success. The agent starts from what's already known, resolves only the choices that would change the direction, challenges it against audience fit and risk, and states clearly whether the result is proposed, accepted, revised, deferred, or rejected.

The Architecture recipe: architecture.md

Kind: workflow recipe. Used when: defining or reviewing structure.

Goal: an accepted or decision-ready structure future work can adopt and verify. The agent maps the relevant system, finds the qualities and constraints that actually drive the decision, compares viable directions, defines the smallest coherent structure, and keeps a recommendation proposed until you accept it. When authorized, it splits adoption into verifiable pieces.

The Templates

Template	Answers	Main sections
document.md	What is the current explanation of this subject?	Summary (scope, authority and status), Current Explanation, Boundaries And Limits, Sources And Related Detail
vision.md	Why does this exist, and for whom?	Vision, Why And For Whom, Scope (first useful version, growth direction), Success, Non-Goals, Principles And Related Sources
architecture.md	How is it structured?	Overview And Scope, Drivers, System Model, Important Flows, Boundaries And Invariants, Tradeoffs And Limits, Related Views And Rationale
principles.md	What guides unfamiliar choices?	Scope, Principles (each with why, in practice, tradeoff), Tensions And Ordering, Change Boundary, Related Sources
maintenance-contract.md	What must stay true about a maintained source?	Source (what it owns, related surfaces), Contract, Verification

How to use it

Use the architecture workflow to review this design. Keep proposed changes distinct from the current architecture and update the existing source when accepted.

Draft a vision for the reporting feature. Keep the draft in Emerging Memory until I accept it.

Good to know

• Start with the question. Use a general Document for a current explanation, and add specialized documents only when their questions need separate answers. This isn't a required document set.
• Drafts stay candidates until accepted.
• Existing documentation doesn't need to move into Memory.
• The package works without Planning. Link to rationale wherever your workspace already keeps it.

Next: Install this package, or update and remove Extensions.