Pattern Proposal: Hierarchical File-System Knowledge Store

Summary

Organize architecture assets, decisions, and runtime artifacts into a segregated file-system folder hierarchy acting as a human- and machine-readable repository.

Candidate Pattern

• ID: hierarchical-file-system-knowledge-store
• Classification: architectural
• Maturity: strategic_direction
• Type: emerging

Observed Signals

No specific signals listed.

Evidence

Supporting Evidence

• cas-knowledge/templates/architecture_decision_record_template.md - Contract template for ADR artifacts within the file-system store.
• cas-knowledge/runtime/execution-profile.yaml - Runtime profile configuration stored in the file-based knowledge repository.
• src/cas_runner/bootstrap.py (init_workspace, merge_cas_governance_block) - Initializes and manipulates the local workspace filesystem hierarchy.

Scope Assessment

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

Rationale

• Intent: Provide transparent, git-versioned persistence for architecture artifacts without requiring an external database server.
• Context: Continuous architecture requires storing global decisions, project-specific contexts, evaluation runtime data, and template contracts in git.
• Force: Databases add infrastructure friction and make human collaboration in pull requests difficult
• Force: Artifacts must be versioned, auditable, and accessible to static documentation generators (MkDocs)

Traceability

Artifact source: proposed-patterns