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ADR-0010: Shelfery Implementation Lives in the Separate pantryplus Repository

Status

approved — ratified by the Founder on 2026-07-11. This partially resolves the question ADR-0007 left open (for Shelfery only; the Digital Products boundary remains open).

Date

2026-07-11

Context

ADR-0007 deliberately left open whether venture implementation code would live in this repository or in separate repositories, deferring the decision "until either venture begins substantial implementation work."

That condition has, in fact, already been met — and the decision has effectively been made by practice rather than by record. A complete, production-deployed implementation of the Shelfery product exists in a separate repository: locally at C:\Users\Stuart\repos\pantryplus, on GitHub as brokenlyre/pantryplus, deployed to production on Vercel. The repository predates (or at least evolved independently of) this governance repository's Shelfery documentation. Its own documentation (docs/ai/decisions.md in that repository) records a product-owner decision to rename the product from "PantryPlus" to "Shelfery," with the shelfery.app domain acquired — confirming it is the implementation of this venture, under a working name that has not yet been migrated.

This governance repository, meanwhile, described Shelfery as pre-product ("no application has shipped"), which was inaccurate. Continuing to treat the repository boundary as open when an implementation repository demonstrably exists and is in production would keep this repository's records misleading.

Decision

Shelfery's implementation code lives in a separate implementation repository — the existing pantryplus repository (GitHub brokenlyre/pantryplus), to be renamed per that repository's own App Rename Runbook. This governance repository remains the canonical home for Shelfery's venture-level strategy, brand, domain standards (notably the trust/food-claims standard), and governance records. It does not host Shelfery application code.

The pantryplus repository's docs/ai/ knowledge base remains the operational source of truth for implementation-level facts (architecture, coding standards, shipped features, implementation-level decisions). Venture-level and material product decisions made there (naming, monetization model, platform strategy) must additionally be reflected in this repository — see the follow-up actions and ventures/shelfery/docs/architecture/implementation-alignment.md.

Consequences

  • This repository's statements that "no application has shipped" for Shelfery are corrected; strategy documents now describe the venture's actual stage.
  • portfolio/repository-registry.json and ventures/shelfery/venture.json register the implementation repository instead of carrying "unresolved" placeholders.
  • A two-repository structure creates a real synchronization burden: material decisions recorded only in pantryplus/docs/ai/decisions.md are invisible to this repository's governance process unless deliberately mirrored. Several such decisions (rename, monetization direction, platform) already accumulated before this ADR; the alignment record inventories them.
  • Company-level policy (evidence standards, food-claims standard, brand independence) continues to bind the implementation repository's customer-facing output even though that repository does not currently reference this one — a gap that needs fixing in that repository (see follow-ups).
  • ADR-0007 was not superseded in full by this ADR at the time — it remained the controlling record for the Digital Products venture's still-open boundary. It has since been superseded in full by ADR-0014: Venture Implementation Repositories Are the Default Pattern (approved 2026-07-12), which generalized this ADR's outcome into company-wide default policy.

Alternatives Considered

  • Migrate the implementation into this repository (monorepo). Rejected: the implementation has an established working deployment pipeline (Vercel GitHub integration on master), CI, and its own agent workflow; migrating would be high-risk churn with no identified benefit.
  • Leave the boundary formally "open" and merely note pantryplus's existence. Rejected: the boundary is not actually open — code exists, runs in production, and is not in this repository. Recording reality inaccurately to preserve optionality would violate this repository's own evidence principles.
  • Treat pantryplus as unrelated to Shelfery. Rejected: its own decision log records the rename to Shelfery and the shelfery.app domain acquisition; the product domain, palette, and tone match this venture's provisional direction in detail.

Follow-up Actions

  • Establish a governance-sync convention: which pantryplus decisions must be mirrored here (proposed criterion: anything meeting this repository's "material decision" bar) and how (see ventures/shelfery/docs/architecture/implementation-alignment.md).
  • Add a pointer from the pantryplus repository's AGENTS.md/docs to this repository's binding venture standards (trust/food-claims, brand independence, evidence principles) — a change in that repository, recommended not yet made.
  • Execute or schedule the PantryPlus → Shelfery rename runbook in the implementation repository, including the repository name itself.
  • ~~Decide whether to back-fill ventures/shelfery/product/ specifications from the implemented product's observed behavior.~~ Moot as of 2026-07-27: that directory was retired, not back-filled — per ADR-0017, this repository no longer holds Shelfery's product specification at all; it lives entirely in the shelfery implementation repository.

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