Engineering Intent Records
The core Alloy object is the Engineering Intent Record. A record expresses a future-facing engineering judgement:
We need to preserve this capability because this threat matters under this expectation, so we prefer this strategy, require this evidence, and accept this tradeoff.
Rather than capturing a rule in the abstract, a record holds an engineering decision together with its reasoning and its costs, so the decision stays contextual and can be evaluated, enforced, and revisited over time.
In this section
- The Engineering Intent Record — the record object and its six fields, with examples and a minimal JSON shape.
- Why Tradeoffs Matter — why the tradeoff field is what keeps records from decaying into truisms.
- Record Lifecycle — the states a record moves through, from Hypothesized to Superseded, and the principles that govern transitions.
- Example Intent Records — four worked examples drawn from real projects.
Related
- Intent Capture — how records are elicited from conversations, codebases, and traces.
- Formation Brief — where accepted records are compiled into work guidance.
- Data Model — how records and their relationships are represented.
Source: Product Brief §9 (Core Concept: Engineering Intent Records).