ODRs¶
Sometimes you simply decide which hotel to book for the next conference. Sometimes more fundamental things are at stake: Who may buy equipment without asking? How do we handle travel costs? For decisions like these there are Organizational Decision Records, or ODRs for short.
An ODR records what your workspace has settled. Your whole team can orient themselves by it – and so can your AI tools.
What an ODR is¶
- Numbered. Every published ODR gets a number you can cite.
- Readable by the whole workspace. Anyone in the workspace can look it up.
- Unalterable. Published ODRs can neither be deleted nor rewritten. The history of your decisions stays traceable.
- For fundamentals only. An ODR is something that can serve as a precedent: a rule, a standing agreement, a direction. A one-off task, an appointment or a time-limited trial doesn’t belong in it.
How an ODR comes about¶
There are two ways:
- From a decision in Rhizome. Once you have settled on something important, it can be turned into an ODR.
- From elsewhere. Decisions made in a meeting, a mail or a wiki can be added after the fact. AI can help: the skill
rhizome:import-to-odrssearches your wikis and protocols and creates drafts.
Before publication, an ODR is a draft: unnumbered, visible only to you, and nobody is notified. You read it again in the app and publish it yourself. You find drafts in the register under My drafts.
Structure¶
An ODR consists of a title that states the decision in one sentence, and these sections:
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Context | Why was it decided, by whom, where? |
| Decision | The rule itself, precisely: amounts, roles, deadlines |
| Consequences | What changes, for whom, from when? |
| Rejected options | What else was on the table and why not? Only if there were any |
It also carries the date the decision was made – not the date the ODR was created.
Valid and superseded¶
An ODR is either valid or superseded. When a rule no longer holds, it isn’t deleted but superseded by a newer ODR. Both stay readable, and the new one points to the old one.
A partial change supersedes too. The new ODR then carries the unchanged rules forward in its own text so that it holds on its own.
The register¶
All ODRs of your workspace are in the ODRs register. There you see what holds, what has been superseded, and which drafts you created yourself.
ODRs as a context layer¶
Because ODRs record what you have decided, they work as a yardstick for new ideas. Through the MCP layer, Claude and ChatGPT can read them. With the skill rhizome:compliance, your AI checks suggestions and concepts against the valid ODRs and quotes which ones speak for or against them.
Silence is not permission
If the AI finds no matching ODR, that only means your workspace hasn’t settled the matter yet. It is not a permission. If you want to settle it, turn it into a topic or a decision.