Pattern Proposal: File-Backed Hierarchical Knowledge Repository

Summary

Structure enterprise architecture knowledge and runtime governance artifacts as a version-controlled directory hierarchy on disk.

Candidate Pattern

• ID: file-backed-hierarchical-knowledge-repository
• Classification: architectural
• Maturity: strategic_direction
• Type: emerging

Observed Signals

No specific signals listed.

Evidence

Supporting Evidence

• cas-knowledge/cas-config.yaml - Root configuration tying repository paths to knowledge base domains.
• cas-knowledge/templates/ - Template collection for ADRs, heuristics, rules, and architecture work items.
• cas-knowledge/runtime/execution-profile.yaml - Runtime profile and trace tracking artifacts stored directly in file tree.

Scope Assessment

• Evidence Strength: high
• Confidence: high
• Applies to: ideas-to-life-cas

Rationale

• Intent: Store architectural decisions, rules, metrics, and templates as plain text/YAML files under Git version control to ensure auditability and human readability.
• Context: Architectural governance decisions must persist across runs, be visible to developers in pull requests, and support template-based authoring.
• Force: Database backends add operational complexity and are opaque to standard Git review workflows.
• Force: Different categories of knowledge (global standards, project-specific overrides, runtime traces) require distinct directory namespaces.

Traceability

Artifact source: proposed-patterns