Glossary: Design Docs
Mirrored from
docs/design/design-docs/references/glossary.md. Edit the source document in the repository, not this generated page.
Terms specific to the design-docs convention and the orbit design tooling. Standard markdown / git terminology (frontmatter, commit, link) is excluded unless the convention gives the term a specific meaning.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| At a Glance table | The required §3 of 1_overview.md mapping each concern to the file that owns it and the task that shipped the work. See 2_design.md §3. |
| Cost line | A bullet in an ADR’s Consequences section labeled Cost: …. Mandatory per CONVENTIONS.md §4; enforced by review. See 2_design.md §4. |
| Earning rule (3-of-3) | The criterion a decision must satisfy to become an ADR rather than design-doc prose: real alternative, forward constraint, non-trivial cost. See 2_design.md §4. |
| Feature folder | A subdirectory of docs/design/ containing one feature’s four numbered docs plus specs/ and references/ subfolders. Lowercase, hyphenated, singular. See 2_design.md §1. |
| Format explainer | The opening paragraph of 4_decisions.md describing the ADR template and listing exceptions (e.g. retroactive entries without task IDs). |
| Last updated anchor | The **Last updated:** YYYY-MM-DD line in each numbered doc’s frontmatter; the author’s assertion that substantive doc content was reviewed or changed on that date. See 4_decisions.md ADR-0159. |
| Numbered doc | One of the four required files in a feature folder: 1_overview.md, 2_design.md, 3_vision.md, 4_decisions.md. Each has a fixed role and required section list. See 2_design.md §3. |
| Owner | The accountable agent family in a doc’s frontmatter (one of codex, claude, gemini, or grok); not a committer list or full model string. See 2_design.md §2. |
| Rollup ADR | A consolidated ADR that absorbs a cluster of accepted ADRs all instantiating the same underlying decision. Folded entries keep their numbers with Status: Superseded by ADR-NNN (folded). See CONVENTIONS.md §4a. |
| Scope paragraph | The opening paragraph of 2_design.md and 3_vision.md, naming what the doc covers and what it deliberately does not. |
| Task References section | The mandatory closing section of every numbered doc, listing only the task IDs cited in that doc. See CONVENTIONS.md §3. |
_archive/ | Reserved subfolder under docs/design/ for retired feature folders. Skipped by orbit.design.list. See CONVENTIONS.md §7. |