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Pattern Scope Classification Framework

Intent

Establish a formal multi-tiered scope taxonomy to classify and govern architectural patterns across defined reuse boundaries (global, domain, project, local), ensuring practices are evaluated and applied at the appropriate organizational level.

Context

In continuous architecture steering and automated pattern discovery pipelines, emerging patterns are mined from distributed repositories and agent workflows. Without explicit scope boundaries, localized optimizations risk premature elevation to enterprise standards, or globally proven solutions remain siloed.

Agentic Profile

Autonomous steering agents and pipeline evaluators query and enforce architectural patterns strictly based on their scope classification. During extraction and classification phases, agents tag candidate patterns with scoping metadata and evaluate applicability constraints against target project contexts.

Forces

The pattern balances organizational consistency against local development velocity by structuring pattern adoption boundaries.

Drivers

  • Need for clear boundaries between organization-wide mandates and project-specific conventions
  • Preventing premature codification of local heuristics into enterprise-wide patterns
  • Facilitating structured pattern discovery, evaluation, and progressive promotion

Constraints

  • Patterns must carry unambiguous scope attribution before ingestion by downstream agents
  • Scope boundaries must align with organizational ownership and governance domains

Tradeoffs

  • Additional classification step introduced into automated pattern extraction workflows
  • Need to resolve boundary disputes when patterns exhibit characteristics spanning multiple scope tiers

Solution

Partition architectural patterns into four distinct taxonomy tiers: Global (enterprise-wide invariant guardrails), Domain (line-of-business or bounded context standards), Project (repository or initiative-specific practices), and Local (temporary or component-level configurations). Enforce scope tagging at discovery time and govern promotions across tiers via deterministic criteria.

Operationalisation

Operationalise the framework within CI/CD and runner workflows through automated classification steps and catalog indexing.

Workflow Implications

  • Pattern discovery pipelines must execute the pattern-scope-classifier step before recommending promotions
  • Downstream steering projections index patterns strictly according to their assigned classification tier
  • Architecture decision records must declare target scope during promotion evaluation

Automation Opportunities

  • Automate scope classification heuristics in src/cas_runner/steps/pattern_scope_classifier.py based on multi-repo recurrence and reference architecture alignment
  • Filter candidate patterns in developer agent prompt contexts based on current repository scope

Implementation Signals

Observable presence of pattern-scope-classifier pipeline steps, scope metadata attributes in pattern definitions, and partitioned catalog directories.

Evidence

Ratified Reference Architecture in ArchGov and implemented pipeline classifier step in CAS runner.

Signals

  • Ratified Reference Architecture in ArchGov
  • Standardized reference architecture specification reference-architecture-pattern-scope-classification-framework.md

Supporting Evidence

  • aw-ideas-to-life-cas-2026-06-06-001

Confidence Basis

Confirmed through Architecture Review Board ratification (ArchGov artifact #104, review #56) and verified execution in cas_runner steps registry.

Consequences

Establishes consistent taxonomy and governance gating while adding classification overhead.

Benefits

  • Prevents scope pollution and catalog dilution across enterprise knowledge bases
  • Provides clear evolutionary paths for patterns transitioning from local experiments to global standards
  • Enables targeted contextual retrieval for agent reasoning without prompt token bloat

Risks

  • Potential classification deadlocks or ambiguous categorization for cross-cutting practices
  • Taxonomy maintenance overhead if domain or project structures evolve frequently

Governance Implications

  • Enforces explicit scope tagging across all pattern proposals and promotion evaluations
  • Downstream continuous architecture steering portals and projections index artifacts strictly by scope tier

Reuse Notes

Globally applicable across all continuous architecture steering platforms, multi-repository governance environments, and agentic knowledge extraction systems. Any repository adopting CAS pattern discovery must incorporate the scope classification framework.

Confidence

High confidence backed by formal ARB ratification and operational integration in CAS core workflows.

Level: high

Rationale

Ratified as Reference Architecture in ArchGov (review #56) by Alexandre Franco with verified implementation in pipeline step pattern-scope-classifier.