architecture-decisions

Architecture Decisions

Pick between approaches quickly, with an explicit priority order, weighted by how expensive the decision is to reverse.

Step 1: Check for a decision to make at all

Grep the codebase for how this problem is already solved here (existing cache? existing error envelope? existing job runner?). If an established pattern exists, use it — consistency with the system beats a locally better choice. Only proceed to Step 2 when the problem is genuinely new to this codebase or the existing pattern demonstrably fails a hard requirement.

Step 2: Generate 2–3 candidates, no more

For each candidate write three lines:

1. Mechanism, one sentence.
2. Worst failure mode — what happens when the dependency is down, input is malformed, load spikes.
3. What it makes hard later — the concrete thing, not "less flexible".

If you have more than three candidates, you haven't understood the constraints; re-read them.

Step 3: Apply the trade-off priority order

Earlier beats later unless the user explicitly reorders:

1. Correctness on known inputs — including the edge cases this data will actually contain.
2. Failure behavior — prefer designs that fail loudly, early, and partially over silently, late, and totally.
3. Simplicity / reviewability — could a competent stranger understand it in one read?
4. Consistency with the existing system.
5. Extensibility — only for axes of change with concrete evidence (a second case exists or is scheduled). Speculative flexibility loses to simplicity, always.
6. Performance — only past correctness, and only where measured or obviously hot (per-request loop, O(n²) on unbounded n, I/O inside a loop). No restructuring without a number.

Kill any candidate that fails a hard constraint (correctness, explicit user requirement). Among survivors, take the simplest that doesn't foreclose a known future need.

Step 4: Calibrate deliberation to reversibility

• Switching later costs < 1 hour → pick the more conventional option NOW and move on. Close calls between good options don't matter; record the choice in one line.
• Switching later means data migration, breaking API consumers, or redone work measured in days → slow down; if the user's context could change the answer, ask one batched question with your recommendation as the default.

Step 5: Dependency sub-decision

Adding a dependency IS an architecture decision. In order:

1. Stdlib or an already-installed dependency does it (check the lockfile, not memory)? → use that.
2. Hand-rolled version is <~50 lines with no tricky edges? → hand-roll. Never hand-roll dates/timezones, crypto, unicode handling, or parsing of established formats — these are always tricky.
3. Otherwise: one boring, widely-used, maintained, license-compatible library. Never a framework to use one function.

Step 6: Abstraction sub-decision

Introduce an interface/base class/plugin point only when two concrete cases already exist or a second is actually scheduled. One implementation → write the direct version and leave a one-line note naming the upgrade path. When you break any default pattern, leave a comment naming the constraint that forced it — the constraint, not a narration.

Default patterns (use unless codebase or user overrides)

• Pure logic at the core; I/O (network, disk, DB, clock, randomness) at the edges, passed in.
• Errors via the language's native mechanism; fail fast on programmer errors; contextualize expected failures; never catch-and-continue silently.
• Persistence invariants live in the database (constraints, unique indexes, FKs), not only in app code.
• Validate at trust boundaries; trust internally.
• Composition over inheritance; functions over classes when no state is carried.

Worked example

Task: "Products API is slow; add caching to product lookups."

• Step 1: grep finds redis in the lockfile, used for sessions. Candidate space narrows.
• Candidates: (A) Redis cache-aside, TTL 5 min. (B) In-process LRU per instance. (C) Materialized view refreshed on write.
• Failure modes: A — stale up to TTL; Redis outage degrades to DB (fine). B — inconsistent across instances after writes (there are 4 instances → correctness problem for post-update reads). C — write amplification, and the write path is owned by another team (hard constraint).
• Kill C (constraint), kill B (fails correctness at priority 1 given multi-instance writes).
• Choose A. Reversibility: swapping cache strategy later ≈ an hour → decide now, no user question needed. Record: "Cache-aside via existing Redis, TTL 5m, key product:{id}, invalidated on update."

Done when

The chosen approach is written in 1–3 lines (mechanism, key parameters, why-over-runner-up), every rejected candidate has a named reason tied to the priority order or a hard constraint, and any expensive-to-reverse decision has either user sign-off or a stated assumption at delivery. Then implement.