- ID: YYBW-013
- Status: Decided
- Date: 2026-04-13
- Scope: YY Branching World / YY's World evolution
- Depends on: YYBW-012
- Supersedes / clarifies: Clarifies what manifests are for
- Museum lineage: PM-019, SK-004, SK-012, SK-013
Context
Once the database of truth hardened, manifests regained a narrower but essential role. The system needs machine-readable summaries of what exists, what is stale, what depends on what, and what needs recomputation. This helps AI operate safely without inferring too much from raw world state.
Decision
Maintain manifests/projections as derived control surfaces:
- world manifest
- build manifest
- publish manifest
These are not canonical truth; they are AI-readable operational maps over the immutable ledger.
Why
This allows AI or automation to:
- determine what changed
- know what needs updating
- avoid reprocessing unaffected artifacts
- act deterministically against explicit state
Alternatives considered
- No manifests; let AI infer from raw DB — rejected as fragile.
- Manifest-only, no immutable DB — rejected because manifests are too lossy as truth.
- One giant monolithic manifest — rejected in favor of layered control surfaces.
Reversals / scars preserved
- The term 'manifest' was initially overloaded. It now has a cleaner role.
- The phrase 'database of truth' corrected the architecture materially.
- This ADR preserves that correction.
Consequences
- Need scheduled regeneration of manifests/projections.
- Need stale-status semantics and dependency tracking.
- Builders should treat manifests as disposable/rebuildable but still important.
Invariants preserved
Explainability and Discipline improve when AI has explicit work surfaces; Survivability improves because manifests can be rebuilt from truth.
Freshness boundary
Stable.