settled-reach/decisions/process.md

Process Decisions

How the team works: composition, naming, workflow.

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D-004: Team composition confirmed

• Date: 2026-02-08
• Decision: Team of 8 agents + Team Leader.

Agent	Role
MIRI	Lore Expert & Canon Guardian
OZZIE	Player Experience / "Wow Factor" Advocate
PAULA	Narrative & Political Depth
GORE	Themes & Endgame Design
GESTALT	Systems Design & Fun Factor
NIGEL	Sandbox & Replayability
TYRE	Technical Architecture & Feasibility
SCRIBE	Documenter
Jeroen	Team Leader, final decisions

D-021: Official project title — "The Settled Reach"

• Date: 2026-02-10
• Decision: The official project and game title is "The Settled Reach". The domain settledreach.com has been secured. Individual campaigns or scenarios can have subtitles in the format "The Settled Reach: [Scenario Name]" but the core title remains consistent.
• Rationale: Following Round 14's worldbuilding confirmation establishing the Settled Reach as the original setting, the Team Leader confirmed this as the official project title. The name reflects the setting's core tension: a civilization that has "settled" across the stars but whose "reach" is ultimately limited by infrastructure it doesn't fully control or understand.
• Repository note: The repository folder and git history will remain as "commonwealth" for historical continuity and to avoid breaking existing paths. The code name vs official title distinction is acceptable (similar to how game projects often have internal code names).
• Raised by: Team Leader (Jeroen), following Round 14 worldbuilding discussion.
• Dissent: None.

D-022: Process — Round-based collaboration workflow

• Date: 2026-02-10
• Decision: Going forward, discussions are captured directly in round documents at docs/discussions/round-NN-topic.md rather than in DISCUSSION.md. DISCUSSION.md has become unwieldy to manage and archive. Qatux must be included in all team interactions (single-agent or multi-agent) to document discussions.
• Rationale: DISCUSSION.md grew to 26,000+ tokens and became clunky to archive. Direct round document creation is cleaner and more maintainable. Qatux's inclusion ensures no decisions or context are lost.
• New workflow:
  1. Create round document at docs/discussions/round-NN-topic.md
  2. Document collaboration within that file
  3. Extract decisions to appropriate domain file in decisions/
  4. Update discussions README
  5. Re-index as needed
• Raised by: Team Leader (Jeroen).
• Dissent: None.
• Effective: Immediately (Round 15 onward).

D-040: Wiki taxonomy structure — hierarchical with YAML frontmatter

• Date: 2026-02-11
• Decision: The project maintains a wiki at wiki/ with a hierarchical directory structure, YAML frontmatter metadata on every entry, and template-driven creation. The structure must be established NOW (project lead directive) and scale from v0.1 (1 system, 1 station, 15 NPCs) to full game (hundreds of systems, thousands of NPCs).
• Directory structure:
  • wiki/_templates/ — entry templates (star-system, station, district, location, character, faction, technology, cultural-group, contraband-type, lore-entry, institution, species, event, concept)
  • wiki/star-systems/ — spatial hierarchy (system → station → district → location)
  • wiki/characters/ — flat structure (characters move between locations)
  • wiki/factions/ — political and institutional bodies
  • wiki/technology/ — technology categories with tier sub-entries
  • wiki/cultural-groups/ — cultures, subcultures, movements
  • wiki/contraband/ — illegal/restricted goods
  • wiki/lore/ — historical events, concepts, cosmology
  • wiki/concepts/ — game-mechanical concepts with lore basis
  • wiki/_meta/ — naming conventions, style guide, cross-reference index
• Design principles: (1) Game-first, not encyclopedia-first — every entry serves the content pipeline. (2) Hierarchical with cross-references via IDs, not file paths. (3) Metadata-rich YAML frontmatter enabling programmatic queries. (4) Template-driven — new entries follow category templates. (5) Every entry has a status field: proposed → draft → canonical.
• Governance: Miri owns wiki structure (new categories, templates, structural decisions). Anyone can create entries within their domain following templates. Qatux maintains the index and cross-references.
• Cross-reference: Setting (D-036)
• Raised by: Miri (Round 2 proposal with full directory structure and 7 YAML schemas), project lead (non-negotiable, directive #5)
• Dissent: None

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4 decisions. Last updated: 2026-02-11