dira decision memory for AI coding agents
$dira whydec-0018
int-0001The why of a decision survives the session that made itactive 2026-07-29
dec-0006Tiers are fractal — one entry model, one join rule, one drift flag, at every levelaccepted 2026-07-29
dec-0011Cross-boundary parent refs publish opaquely, and resolution reports three statesaccepted 2026-07-30
dec-0018Withheld is a declared first-class state, marked in the instrument hueaccepted 2026-07-30
✗ Plain speech — no hue, no mark, grey italic where the parent title would beSpends nothing, and borrows no presence either.
✗ Sealed material — no hue; absence drawn as a hatched slabStronger than it first appeared, because the slab occupies exactly the space the title would have, so the absence has shape.
int-0001The why of a decision survives the session that made it
dec-0006Tiers are fractal — one entry model, one join rule, one drift flag, at every level
dec-0011Cross-boundary parent refs publish opaquely, and resolution reports three states
dec-0018Withheld is a declared first-class state, marked in the instrument hue
✗Plain speech — no hue, no mark, grey italic where the parent title would be
✗Sealed material — no hue; absence drawn as a hatched slab
dec-0018 ◆ accepted 2026-07-30

Arising from dec-0011 — Cross-boundary parent refs publish opaquely, and resolution reports three states

Withheld is a declared first-class state, marked in the instrument hue

A `⊙` mark and a `withheld` status in `--bearing`, sitting in the same column position where other rows read `accepted 30 Jul` or `informs`.

**Only orphan is drift, and only orphan may use `--caught`** (Law 1). Withheld reads as neither an error nor a warning — that was the whole difficulty, and it is why the three states were rendered *adjacent*, with the real red drift card in the rail, so withheld was judged against the alarm it must not resemble rather than in isolation.

The cost, recorded rather than absorbed

`--bearing` now carries **two** documented meanings — the instrument, and withheld. The hue budget says one meaning per hue and a hue with no role fails review. This is a deliberate exception, taken because withheld *is* an instrument state: it is the compass reporting what it can and cannot resolve. A fourth hue would have been the alternative and would have cost more.

What the founder caught

The first cut said the same thing three times — a prose clause, a status word, and the Arising sentence. The row is now `sire:int-0002 private ledger ⊙ withheld`, and the plain-language explanation appears once, in the Arising line, where a stranger reads. That also fixed a hierarchy inversion nobody had named: withheld was rendering as the visually heaviest row in the chain, and withheld is the unremarkable state.

Alternatives on record — 2

✗Plain speech — no hue, no mark, grey italic where the parent title would berefused Spends nothing, and borrows no presence either.

Seen at full size beside a card that clearly resolved, grey italic in an otherwise empty slot is what a failed fetch looks like: it risks reading as "loading", which is a stranger concluding the page is broken. That is the same failure just fixed on the drift card.

✗Sealed material — no hue; absence drawn as a hatched slabrefused Stronger than it first appeared, because the slab occupies exactly the space the title would have, so the absence has shape.

Rejected because it adds a texture primitive the system does not own, and it is the one place a graphic stands in for content, which a reviewer will fairly raise against Law 3.

revisit ifthe hue budget is ever audited and --bearing's second meaning is rejected

Every decision in this repo is recorded like this one.

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