ADR-0144 — Keys and scaffold: intent, review, and findings are the keys; everything else is scaffold

Context

1. Optionality vocabulary stopped carrying information. With the store retired (ADR-0141) and the tools demoted to reinforcement (ADR-0140), Suspec is an opinionated engine for the agent's internal working artifacts — nothing in it is imposed, so everything is optional in the trivial sense. A doctrine built on mandatory-vs-optional (ADR-0134's triad) now sorts the parts by a distinction that no longer separates them.
2. The derived surfaces had already drifted apart. The rewritten loop pages carried the review inside the numbered happy path while the ledger still called it an optional layer — two stories about the same step. The useful question is not "which steps may I skip?" but "which parts will I touch on virtually every change, however light, and which parts does the work pull in when it earns them?"
3. The owner named the keys. Every change starts with intent — even when the next step is straight to code. Nearly every change ends with a judgment of the result and a decision about what it taught. Those three moments — intent, review, findings — are present at minimum ceremony; the rest is what Suspec builds around them.

Decision

1. The keys: intent → review → findings. The three parts of the loop present on virtually every change, at whatever weight the change earns. Intent may be one sentence folded inline; review may be the owner reading the diff; findings may be the deliberate decision that nothing durable was learned. Weight flexes (ADR-0131); presence is the norm. Level: convention.

2. The scaffold: what Suspec erects around the keys when the work earns it. The spec (the structured form intent graduates into), the task split, the inventory, the change plan, and the deterministic checker are scaffold — pulled in proportionally, never a station to pass through. Implementation itself is neither key nor scaffold; it is the work the loop exists to serve. Level: convention.

3. Keys-and-scaffold replaces mandatory-vs-optional as the doctrine and the vocabulary. Docs, skills, and the site describe parts as keys or scaffold; they do not sort steps into mandatory and optional bins. Level: convention.

4. The seal reads accordingly. The hexagon is the full loop (intent · spec · implement · review · check · findings); the triangle inside it is the three keys (intent · review · findings). Level: convention.

Superseded and narrowed decisions

Narrowed:

• ADR-0134 — Decision 1's mandatory triad (spec → run → close, with intake/task/review as optional steps) is replaced by Decisions 1–3 above. Decision 2 stands verbatim (artifact relationships are not optional once a part is used; a review reconciles against the spec, never the task). Decision 3 stands verbatim (every part keeps a by-hand path; skills and tools are additive; no canonical part depends on an optional one — now read as: no key depends on scaffold).
• ADR-0140 Decision 4 — proportional rigor stands, restated through this lens: the keys are always present, the scaffold is what proportionality dials.

Upheld: ADR-0131 (the weight dial), ADR-0121-as-narrowed (the review key is where the evidence discipline and the deterministic floor live), ADR-0142 (the findings key's destination).

Alternatives considered

Consequences

• Positive: one story everywhere — the loop pages, the skills, and the seal say the same thing; the trivial path stops looking like an exception to the doctrine and becomes its cleanest expression (keys only, zero scaffold).
• Negative: a vocabulary migration across canon, skills prose, and the site (this ADR's propagation); "optional" lingers in older ADR bodies, which stay immutable.
• Neutral: the seal's geometry is unchanged; only its stated semantics move.

Status

Accepted (2026-07-11). Narrows ADR-0134 and ADR-0140 Decision 4; upholds ADR-0131, ADR-0142. Part of the ADR-0140 re-founding.

Propagation

• docs/adrs/README.md — ledger row + disposition notes on 0134 and 0140.
• Canon: docs/02-basic-workflow.md (keys and scaffold replace "the loop" + "the optional layers"), docs/01-what-is-suspec.md, README.md, docs/reference/cheatsheet.md, docs/reference/glossary.md (key · scaffold entries), tutorial and examples where they sort steps by optionality.
• corpus-skills: catalog prose that sorts the loop into mandatory/optional.
• corpus-website: the loop page, the step rail, the seal/logo semantics (hexagon = the loop, triangle = intent · review · findings), what-is-suspec.
• corpus-works: the workspace bootloader's triad line.