deepseek-harness/docs/rfc/implemented/process/2026-06-20-rfc-classification.md

RFC: Classify RFCs by kind via path-encoded subdirectories

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Status: implemented

Problem

docs/rfc/ grouped RFCs by lifecycle only — proposed/ / implemented/ / rejected/. Nothing recorded what kind of decision each RFC was. The index was one flat list per lifecycle, with no way to scan "show me every simplification" or "every testing-strategy decision." A wave of simplification RFCs landing on the same day made the gap concrete: a reader skimming proposed/ could not tell a new capability from a removal from a tooling-policy change without opening each file.

The repo's standing bias is mechanical quality gates over prose guidelines: a convention that isn't machine-checked rots. So a classification scheme here had to be enforceable, not an honor-system header.

Decision

Add a second axis — the RFC's class — and encode it in the path: {lifecycle}/{class}/yyyy-mm-dd-topic.md. The folder is the label. A file's location declares its class, the closed set is "these folders and no others," and the existing verify-md-links gate already protects the path rewrites the move required.

The closed set of six classes

Class	Covers
feature	A new user- or model-facing capability.
bug-fix	Corrects a defect or closes a gap a postmortem surfaced.
simplification	Removes code, behavior, or surface area without adding a capability.
architecture	A structural decision about the shipped source — how packages relate, what the runtime vocabulary is.
process	Tooling, policy, or workflow around the code, not runtime behavior.
testing	Test infrastructure and strategy.

The architecture / process line: architecture is about the source we ship; process is the surrounding tooling and workflow. This RFC is itself a process decision — it changes how the repo is organized and gated, not what the harness does at runtime — so it lives under implemented/process/.

Two gates

Both are doc-sync members, in the verify-md-wrap style (tsx ESM, verify-don't-generate, exit non-zero on the first violation):

• scripts/verify-rfc-classification.ts — the closed set and index freshness. It asserts every file under a lifecycle folder lives in a class folder from the canonical set (a loose .md at a lifecycle root, or an unknown class folder, fails), and that the generated INDEX.md byte-matches a fresh render from the tree (see generate the RFC index tables). The canonical class set lives as a const in scripts/rfc-index.ts — the machine source of truth shared with the generator — and the README documents it in prose; the class descriptions stay hand-written, the index is generated.
• scripts/verify-doc-refs.ts — source comments that cite docs. RFC paths are referenced not only from Markdown but from TypeScript doc comments (root-relative prose like docs/rfc/implemented/testing/2026-06-19-acp-snapshot-tests.md). verify-md-links never saw those, so the reorg could have silently orphaned them. This gate scans repo-authored .ts under packages/** and examples/** (excluding built lib/ and vendor/) for docs/….md tokens, resolves each root-relative, and asserts it exists. It requires the .md extension so extensionless prose (docs/postmortem/0001, docs/architecture.md § Extending The Harness) is left alone.

Alternatives considered

• A Classification: prose line in each file (next to Status:), parsed by the gate. Workable, but it duplicates into the file a fact the path can already carry, and a line can disagree with its folder. Path-encoding makes the label and its storage the same thing — there is nothing to keep in sync.
• A refactor class. It overlaps simplification almost entirely; the only discriminator anyone reached for was "does observable behavior change?", which simplification already encodes (it does not). One class, not two.
• Auto-generating the index from the filesystem. Rejected here to keep the index hand-written; superseded by generate the RFC index tables once stacked proposal waves made the hand-written tables the repo's most conflict-prone docs region — the list is now the fully generated INDEX.md while the README prose stays curated.

Consequences

• Every RFC now sits under a class folder, and the index groups by class within each lifecycle. A reader scans one heading to see all simplifications, or all testing decisions.
• Two more fast tsx scripts in the doc-sync chain; no new dependency (the mdast/GFM stack was already present for verify-md-wrap/verify-md-links).
• Adding a class is a deliberate act: amend the const in scripts/rfc-index.ts and the Classification section, not just mkdir a folder. The gate rejects an unknown folder, so an ad-hoc class can't slip in.
• Source-comment doc references are now gated too — a moved or renamed doc that a .ts comment cites fails the pre-push hook, closing a drift class verify-md-links structurally could not see.