ADR-010: Name the project chester, after Chesterton’s Fence
Status Superseded — by ADR-011 · Filed 2026-08-03
Context
The package needed a name before it had a repository. The obvious framing: project memory exists so that the next person to look at a constraint can find out why it is there before deciding what to do about it.
That is Chesterton’s Fence almost exactly. “Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.” An unexplained constraint is a fence in a field; a decision record is the answer to “why is this here?”, written down while somebody still knew.
Decision
Name the package chester.
The allusion is load-bearing rather than decorative: the single most common failure the record prevents is a change that violates a constraint nobody remembered was deliberate. Naming the tool after that failure keeps the reason in front of anyone typing the command.
Alternatives considered
- A descriptive name (
project-memory,adr-tools). Unambiguous and inert. Descriptive names don’t teach; a reader learns nothing from the name that the README doesn’t say better. - An acronym. Rejected on sight — an acronym is a name that has to be expanded before it means anything, which is the opposite of the property wanted.
Consequences
- The name requires knowing the parable. That is a bet on the audience.
- It frames the record around defending existing constraints, which is one of its jobs and not the largest one.
Postscript
Superseded within the day by ADR-011, which argues both of the consequences above are worse than they look. This record is kept intact rather than rewritten — that is the rule (ADR-001), and this is the corpus’s worked example of it.