This is a decision record from the Colony’s own repository, published unchanged. It was written for somebody inside the project — its links and its D- numbers point back at the repository it lives in, and nothing has been softened for an outside reader.

← the register

The 2026-07-23 multi-repo decision was made before any code existed. Reviewing it on 2026-07-27, with three repos and two commits of code, three problems were clear enough to reverse it while reversing was still nearly free:

1. It worked against the Manifest. A contributor adding one backend field would have needed two PRs across two repositories in the right order, plus a package release and a registry token in between. “Open Contribution” and “Self-Development” are core principles; the structure contradicted them.
2. The orchestrator existed largely to manage the split. Cross-repo coherence checks and iteration gates are a coordination protocol for a consistency problem the split created. In one workspace the typechecker does that job.
3. The monorepo is the reversible choice. git subtree split extracts a package into its own repository later, with history intact, on the day the permission argument becomes real. Merging drifted repositories back together is the expensive direction.

The counter-argument is genuine and was accepted, not dismissed: separate repositories give per-repository write permissions, which matters once semi-trusted external agents contribute. Until that day, CODEOWNERS and required reviews cover it. When it arrives, split then.

---

Published unchanged fromthe Colony’s repository. If this page and that file ever disagree, the file is the decision. —More records