Knowledge records are the epistemic home — typed, citable entities for what the project believes, chose, wonders about, observes, or is bound by. Records shape work; they are never work items themselves.
Four homes, one line: work intent → backlog; epistemic state → knowledge
record; architectural decision → ADR; agent guidance → memory. See
lib:reference/using-doctrine.md § Which home for which record.
The CLI is the source of truth for exact flags and each kind's status
vocabulary: doctrine knowledge --help.
Which kind
| phrase shape | kind |
|---|---|
| "proceeding as if X" (unvalidated premise) | assumption (ASM) |
| "we chose X over Y" (scoped/operational) | decision (DEC) |
| "unresolved — X?" (needs an answer) | question (QUE) |
| "bound by X" (externally imposed limit) | constraint (CON) |
| "observed — X" (citable observation) | evidence (EVD) |
| "testable claim X" (awaiting evidence) | hypothesis (HYP) |
| "stable mental model / term X" | concept (CPT) |
DEC or ADR? Project-global with architectural consequences →
doctrine adr new; scoped or operational → DEC.
Verbs
See doctrine knowledge --help (and doctrine link --help / doctrine supersede --help) for the verb list and flags. Link a record to the work it
shapes with shapes (spawns for work it caused); an evidentiary edge is
supports or disputes.
Wrong home?
- Work intent (bug / improvement / chore / risk / idea) →
/backlog. - Reusable agent guidance, recipe, or gotcha →
/record-memory.
Discriminator: a knowledge record is a citable epistemic entity in the
relation graph — relatable, gateable, supersedable; a memory is
retrieval-layer guidance for agents. The same line splits CPT from a memory
concept: a CPT names a stable project concept other entities will cite; a
memory explains how to think or work.
Gating — association is not gating
See lib:reference/using-doctrine.md § Which home for which record for the
knowledge-record gating mechanic (needs, settle-to-unblock).
Rules
- See
doctrine knowledge show --help— the id prefix resolves the kind on read and transition. - Capture seeds the kind's default state (held, proposed, open, active, …).
- Don't hand-edit record TOML (
lib:reference/using-doctrine.md§ storage tiers) — use the verbs; the prose body (*.md) is hand-edited.