Source of Truth Rules¶
This is the short, agent-actionable version of docs/governance/authority-and-inheritance.md, which remains the canonical document. If this summary and that document ever disagree, the governance document wins.
Precedence order (highest first)¶
- Explicit current human instruction.
- Legal, security, privacy, and safety requirements.
- Approved company ADRs and policies.
- Approved company standards.
- Approved venture ADRs and standards.
- Approved product specifications.
- Approved component specifications.
- Templates and guides.
- Implementation details.
- Examples and historical artifacts.
A document's status matters as much as its position: draft/proposed material never
outranks approved material at a lower-numbered tier. See
docs/governance/document-metadata-standard.md.
How to resolve a conflict¶
- If two sources sit at different tiers, the higher tier wins.
- If two sources sit at the same tier and disagree, do not pick one silently — this is a same-level conflict that requires human escalation (see escalation-and-ambiguity.md).
- Always state the conflict explicitly rather than resolving it quietly, even when the answer seems obvious to you. The person reviewing your work needs to see that a conflict existed.
When in doubt, ask¶
If you cannot confidently place two conflicting sources on this precedence order, or the resolution would touch a high-risk area (see task-classification-and-routing.md), stop and ask a human rather than guessing. It is always acceptable to surface uncertainty; it is not acceptable to silently paper over a contradiction.