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Devonside Labs Business Model, Brand Approval, and Implementation Repository

Objective

Firm up Devonside Labs' business model (sells structured digital templates — Excel, Notion, Google Sheets, Monday.com — via third-party marketplaces, Etsy primary) as a formal decision, approve the still-pending brand-name ADR it depends on, reconcile stale venture documentation, and scaffold a new implementation repository to support development.

Scope

  • Approve ADR-0009 (Devonside Labs public brand name), previously drafted but never formally ratified.
  • Draft and approve ADR-0016 (business model: structured digital templates sold via third-party marketplaces, Etsy primary channel, others added as appropriate).
  • Reconcile stale venture documentation that contradicted the now-approved ADR-0009: ventures/digital-products/docs/strategy/venture-brief.md, ventures/digital-products/docs/strategy/brand-and-positioning.md, and the root portfolio/venture-registry.json (all still said "not finalized" / "working name" despite venture.json already reflecting the brand decision).
  • Scaffold a new implementation repository at C:\Users\Stuart\repos\devonside-labs using scripts/create_implementation_repository.py (built in an earlier session for ADR-0014), with slug digital-products and display name "Devonside Labs".
  • Create the GitHub repository (brokenlyre/devonside-labs, private per ADR-0008) and push the initial scaffold commit, per explicit user instruction to do so now rather than defer.
  • Update portfolio/repository-registry.json (governance repo) from the script's planned entry to active with the real URL, consolidating it with the stale pre-existing "unresolved" placeholder entry for this venture's implementation repository (two entries existed describing the same thing; merged into one).
  • Update known_implementation_repositories in both ventures/digital-products/venture.json and the root portfolio/venture-registry.json.

Out of scope

  • Choosing an actual technology stack for the new repository — no product has cleared discovery yet, so the repository's .github/workflows/ci.yml is a placeholder stub (adjusted from the scaffold template's Node/npm default, which would have failed immediately with no package.json present) and README.md/docs/ai/architecture.md explicitly flag the stack as undecided.
  • Selecting a first product, pricing model, or specific marketplace fee/support research — all remain open per venture-brief.md's own open questions, unaffected by ADR-0016.
  • Visual identity (logo, wordmark, color palette) for Devonside Labs — still explicitly not decided, per brand-and-positioning.md.

Applicable authority

  • ADR-0005 — venture brand independence.
  • ADR-0008 — new repositories default to private.
  • ADR-0014 — governs scaffolding a new venture implementation repository.
  • docs/governance/decision-rights.md — brand/business model decisions require Founder approval; status stays proposed until explicitly ratified, naming the document.

Files expected to change

Governance repository (devonshire-digital): - docs/decisions/ADR-0009-digital-products-venture-public-brand-devonside-labs.md (approved) - docs/decisions/ADR-0016-devonside-labs-marketplace-templates-business-model.md (new, approved) - docs/decisions/README.md - ventures/digital-products/docs/strategy/venture-brief.md - ventures/digital-products/docs/strategy/brand-and-positioning.md - ventures/digital-products/venture.json - portfolio/venture-registry.json - portfolio/repository-registry.json

New implementation repository (devonside-labs, separate repository, not tracked by this governance repo's own git history): - Initial scaffold commit, .github/workflows/ci.yml adjusted to a placeholder stub, README.md and docs/ai/product-vision.md filled in with known venture context.

Assumptions

  • The Founder's chat instruction ("firm up that Devonside Labs is the brand that will sell digital products... on sites such as Etsy or any other avenue that we find appropriate") is treated as the substance of ADR-0016's decision, confirmed via explicit approval in the same session (see Decisions required / approvals below) rather than inferred from a general "proceed."
  • "Any other avenue we find appropriate" is treated as an intentionally open channel strategy (Etsy named as primary, not exclusive) rather than a commitment to a fixed list of marketplaces — stated explicitly in ADR-0016 to avoid future ambiguity.
  • The pre-existing stale "unresolved" placeholder entry in portfolio/repository-registry.json for a Digital Products implementation repository was safe to remove/consolidate rather than retain alongside the new active entry, since both described the same (now-resolved) fact and keeping both would be actively misleading.

Risks

  • ADR-0009 and ADR-0016 are both brand/business-model decisions — the kind of material, hard-to-reverse decision requiring explicit Founder approval per decision-rights.md. Both were approved in this session per direct, specific instruction; recorded with approved_by / approved_date.
  • Creating a real GitHub repository and pushing to it is a shared-state, harder-to-reverse action (per this session's operating instructions) — done only after explicit user confirmation to create the repo and push now, rather than deferring to a separate approval step.
  • The new repository's CI workflow is currently a no-op placeholder; if left unnoticed, a future session might assume CI is enforcing something. Mitigated by an explicit comment in the workflow file pointing to the governance repo's Node/npm template as a starting point once a stack is chosen.

Validation plan

  • python scripts/check.py — all validators, governance repo.
  • python -m unittest discover tests — full suite, governance repo.
  • Manual verification: gh repo view brokenlyre/devonside-labs confirms the repository exists and the initial commit is pushed.

Progress checklist

  • [x] Surveyed existing Digital Products / Devonside Labs docs to confirm this wasn't greenfield (ADR-0009 already existed but unapproved; venture-brief.md already had the marketplace channel as an unresearched assumption).
  • [x] Approved ADR-0009 per explicit user instruction.
  • [x] Drafted and approved ADR-0016 per explicit user instruction, via the new-adr skill.
  • [x] Updated the ADR index.
  • [x] Reconciled venture-brief.md, brand-and-positioning.md, root portfolio/venture-registry.json, and ventures/digital-products/venture.json with the approved decisions.
  • [x] Ran python scripts/check.py and python -m unittest discover tests — both passed.
  • [x] Scaffolded the implementation repository at C:\Users\Stuart\repos\devonside-labs via scripts/create_implementation_repository.py --register.
  • [x] Filled in README.md and docs/ai/product-vision.md with known context rather than leaving generic placeholders; replaced the Node/npm CI template with a placeholder stub since no stack is chosen and no package.json exists.
  • [x] git init, initial commit, gh repo create brokenlyre/devonside-labs --private --push.
  • [x] Updated portfolio/repository-registry.json to active with the real URL, consolidating the stale duplicate "unresolved" entry.
  • [x] Updated known_implementation_repositories in venture.json and the root registry.
  • [x] Re-ran python scripts/check.py and tests after registry updates — both passed.
  • [x] Committed and pushed governance-repo changes.
  • [x] Archived this plan.

Decisions required

None outstanding — ADR-0009 and ADR-0016 were both approved by Stuart M. Davis (Founder) in this session, and repository creation was explicitly authorized.

Handoff notes

Governance-repo changes are staged but not yet committed as of writing this plan — commit and push are the last remaining steps. The devonside-labs repository itself is already created, committed, and pushed to https://github.com/brokenlyre/devonside-labs (private). If picked up later: check git log in both repositories to confirm final state matches this plan.

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