A repository is decision-ready for coding agents when important decisions are reviewed and current, agents can retrieve them through a common read-only path, results carry stable citations, and every claimed enforcement result has explicit scope and objective evidence.
Record
Begin with authority. The repository should identify which records are accepted, who can change them and how a newer decision supersedes an older one. A folder of unvalidated notes is useful documentation, but it does not yet provide dependable project authority.
- Important decisions have stable identifiers, context, rationale and status.
- Rejected alternatives are recorded when they are likely to reappear.
- Changes to accepted records pass through human review.
- Superseded records remain linked instead of being silently rewritten.
Retrieve
Test discovery using the questions engineers actually ask, not only exact document titles. The same query against the same commit should be reproducible when the result is used as authority.
- Every supported agent has a concise route to the common decision record.
- Queries return record IDs and inspectable source citations.
- An empty result is reported as missing coverage, not filled with a guess.
- The read interface cannot silently modify accepted decisions.
Enforce
Separate guidance from proof. Each blocking check should state the decision, constraint, scope and evidence it evaluated.
- Only objectively checkable consequences are labelled enforced.
- Changed-file and full-tree results are not conflated.
- Judgement-based decisions remain visible for review.
- Checks are updated or retired when their decisions are superseded.
Start with one failure you already recognise
Do not attempt to document the entire system before receiving value. Choose a decision reviewers repeatedly explain, record it properly, make it retrievable and add one honest check if possible. The repository becomes more decision-ready one defended boundary at a time.