2.8 KiB
ADR 0003: Module focus and editorial acceptance
Status: Accepted
Date: 2026-11-11
Context
Audita gives each correction module a focused task. A prompt review suggested making that task's scope an acceptance condition, because validators can accept minor editorial changes that the proposing module was not asked to make.
The maintainer's practical testing established why this difference is deliberate. Models persistently propose minor editorial cleanup when it is clearly warranted in the supplied text. Instructions strict enough to suppress that cleanup also suppress desirable edits. Enforcing exclusive module scopes would therefore trade away useful corrections to achieve a separation that does not serve the application's editorial goals.
Decision
Module scope guides the corrections Audita asks a model to propose. It is not an exhaustive boundary on acceptable edits. Minor editorial cleanup is permitted across modules and their validators even when the proposal prompt does not request it.
Validators must not reject an otherwise acceptable minor editorial change solely because it falls outside the originating module's requested focus. Existing checks for applicability, protected terms, meaning, and other domain concerns continue to apply. This allowance does not guarantee that any particular edit passes validation or application, nor does it authorize arbitrary rewriting.
Proposal, validation, and repair instructions may differ to serve their roles. Their consistency should be assessed against this distinction, rather than by requiring identical lists of allowed edits. Repair feedback should not turn module focus into an exclusive acceptance rule.
Alternatives considered
Strict module-aware acceptance, whether implemented in shared validators, separate review definitions, or an additional scope check, would make stage boundaries easier to describe. It is rejected because the maintainer's testing shows that suppressing incidental cleanup also suppresses desirable work.
Request every kind of cleanup in every module would align proposal requests with the broader acceptance policy, but would dilute the focused tasks. Permitting incidental cleanup does not require asking each stage to perform every task.
Consequences
An edit accepted outside a module's requested focus is not, by itself, a design defect. Prompt maintenance and evaluation should preserve useful corrections while checking substantive editorial quality. They should not introduce strict scope enforcement as an apparent consistency fix.
The architecture policy records the boundary. Reconsidering this accepted decision requires new evidence and explicit supersession under the ADR lifecycle, rather than rediscovering the same prompt/validator difference during each review.