Short records of decisions that shape the ARES runtime, and the reasoning behind them. They exist so the next maintainer — human or agent — does not have to re-derive intent from code, or silently reverse a decision that was deliberate.
Write one when a choice is load-bearing and non-obvious: something a reasonable person would otherwise “fix” the other way.
| ADR | Decision |
|---|---|
| 0001 | |
| 0002 | ARES owns its store; workers own theirs |
| 0003 | read_only marks absence of a write-back path |
| 0004 | Frontend consumes ARES contracts, never framework shapes |
| 0005 | |
| 0006 | JaegerAI is reached through its contract, never imported |
| 0007 | Browser chat streaming is WebSocket; SSE is compatibility only |
| 0008 | Workers reached via adapters; Jaeger’s HTTP gateway is vestigial |
| 0009 | Framework adapters are the canonical execution registry |
| 0010 | Model inference and agent delegation are different operations |
| 0011 | CLI agent delegation is single-turn; only Hermes resumes |
Format: context, decision, consequences, and what would justify revisiting it.
ADRs 0001–0005 were deleted during a docs reorganization in 2026-08. Within weeks, three separate agents re-derived and re-litigated ADR-0001’s decision (workers out-of-process) from scratch, because the reasoning no longer existed anywhere in the repo. Restoring them is what ADR-0006 documents.
An accepted ADR is superseded by a newer ADR that says so — never by deletion, and never by silently building the other way. If one looks obsolete, check its “Revisit if” clause first: several of these anticipate the exact objection that tends to reopen them.
Paths in 0001–0005 predate the api/backends/ → integrations/workers/ move
(and frontend/ → apps/web/) and are left as written; ADRs are historical
records, not living documents.
ADRs 0001–0005 are all marked “recorded retroactively.” ADR-0005 turned out to be inaccurate on the day it was written — it documented an inherited upstream decision rather than ARES’s actual implementation, and was cited as binding within hours of these files being restored. See ADR-0007.
A record that was never true is more dangerous than a missing one, because it gets quoted with confidence. Check a retroactive ADR against the code it claims to describe before relying on it.
Known open corrections: none outstanding.
ADR-0003 was verified on 2026-08-12 and still holds — its semantic (“does ARES have a supported append path?”) exactly matches the code. See ADR-0011, which confirms there is no append path for the CLI delegation backends and records why.