ADR-0001: Academic deliverable with a production-shaped core

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-09-02

Decisions

D-01 The effort is an academic deliverable whose retrieval path is built for real

Two of the five source objectives are study objectives (R-04), so the deliverable is a report and a demonstrable system, not a shipped product. The retrieval path is nonetheless built properly — real SDS parsing, a correct data model, honest provenance — while everything only a company can supply is explicitly stubbed and named as a gap.

Context

R-04 lists five objectives; objectives 2 and 3 are "study" verbs, and objectives 4 and 5 are near-duplicate build verbs. R-19's claimed benefits carry no thresholds. The source is a concept poster (see docs/knowledge/research/source-poster.md), which cannot support a production commitment.

Rejected options

• Pure academic deliverable — rejected because hardcoded data would make study objective R-04.2 ("study the benefits of using AI to deliver hazard information") unanswerable. You cannot study the benefits of a thing you faked.
• Real product for real workers — rejected because it requires a licensed SDS feed, a liability position, human review of safety output and support, none of which are available to this effort. Roughly five times the scope, and it would demote the study objectives to secondary.

This ruling may not be re-decided

If a change contradicts this ADR: stop and raise it. Do not implement over it. In particular, do not quietly upgrade a stub into a production claim, and do not downgrade the retrieval path to hardcoded data because a deadline is close.

Consequences

Every stubbed area must be listed as a gap in the spec, not silently omitted. "It is only a project" is not a licence to fake the retrieval path.

Coverage

Upstream	Landed in	Evidence	Note
R-04	D-01	study verbs quoted in Context	R-04 superseded by R-24; the two study verbs survive it. Do not cite R-04.2 — R-24 deleted that objective, per ADR-0018 D-33, which lists this ADR among the five affected.
R-19	D-01	unquantified benefits cited as reason no production bar exists