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atlas / docs / decisions / 0003-merge-moves-to-enrich.md
0003-merge-moves-to-enrich.md 2.0K source

3. Cross-source merge moves from generate to enrich

  • Date: 2026-08-02
  • Status: accepted
  • Where it is written down: issue #5 §5.2, §5.3, §10 decision 4; generate.md, enrich.md

Context

In the reference implementation, folding several sources' readings of one volume together happens inside composition. That places the merge — with its affine fits, its match radii, its per-key attribute policy and its ledger — in the middle of the lane whose job is to turn one source's capture into one volume. Composition therefore has to know what a donor is, and the generate lane cannot be reasoned about, tested, or replaced without the merge coming along.

Decision

Generate is single-source. What one source said travels through untouched. Folding readings together is an enricher — the first of the curated queue — and the composed multi-source result is generate ⊕ enrich.

Correctness is defined at the composed-bundle level: the goldens check the result of running both lanes, not the boundary between them.

Consequences

  • The two lanes never import each other (issue #5 §3.2, enforced by tools/depcheck), which is what forces the adapter seam of ADR 9.
  • Only a merge ledger ever names a source, so the source-neutral rule (ADR 4) has exactly one sanctioned exception and it is a provenance record.
  • An enriched build must win the registry fold deterministically, which is ADR 10, which is in turn why every merged fixture carries the enriched-build-revision waiver: the reference tree wrote a plain policy revision, so the manifest — and therefore the stamp and the file name — cannot match by construction.
  • Merge becomes replaceable and separately testable: it sees translated worlds and returns contributions, and everything it decided is in a ledger the gate audits.