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Note 2026-10-26 (STA-806): open question 1 (pack home) is settled by 0370, a new package, @stackra/market-packs, not part of @stackra/settings. Open question 3 has the owner’s answer RV-4 (review round 2, X2-18): a record follows the pack of its legal entity (or its Market for a sale), and a shared process takes the strictest active pack, which 0385 proposes as a pack per rule subject. Open question 2 (who signs) is proposed in 0386. These ADRs are Proposed; this page’s own status is unchanged.
Proposed. When accepted, it adds a dated Note to 0203, 0242, 0210, 0189, 0343, 0220, 0268, 0192, 0186 and 0360 (the items listed in notes/handover/adr-hardcoding-findings.md). It reads with 0213 (settings cascade), 0331 (rules), 0153 (automations), 0270 (builder document kinds), 0356 (provider per Market) and 0359 (sandbox and live).

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Context

The owner ruled on 2026-10-25 that every business answer is a default configuration, seeded as data and editable in each product’s admin. Several Stackra ADRs still carry business values: the plan ladder in 0242, tier names in 0203, country tax rules “in OS code” in 0220 and 0268, named privacy laws in 0189 and 0343, and a 100-recipient threshold in 0360. A mechanism that names a country or a price cannot serve a second market or a second product without a code change. Stackra already has the pieces: the settings cascade (0213), the rules engine (0331), the workflow engine (0153), the builder document kinds (0270) and provider choice per Market (0356).

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Decision

  1. Code holds mechanism only. Engines, ports, drivers, studios and importers are code. Business behaviour is not: prices, plans, tiers, seat kinds, modules, fees, limits, trials, offers, policies and thresholds are data.
  2. Four homes for business behaviour.
    • Data: catalogue records and settings, edited in each product’s admin.
    • Rules: any decision with a condition is a rule set in @stackra/rules (0331). Return windows, deposits, cash on delivery, approvals, tips, service charges, discount permits and commissions are rule sets.
    • Workflows: any multi-step flow is a workflow template (0153).
    • Studios: screens, forms, dashboards, reports and print documents are builder documents (0270).
  3. Market packs. A country or legal area is a market pack: versioned data with effective dates that holds tax, e-invoicing, till fiscal rules, legal floors, carriers, payment and messaging providers, sign-in and verification methods, holidays, address format, currency and languages. Overlays (a free zone, an EU member state) extend a base pack. No Stackra package names a country. A driver may serve one country; choosing it is pack data through the Connection rule of 0356.
  4. Legal floors are pack data. A legal minimum or maximum (a withdrawal period, a reporting window, a retention period, a tax rate) is a floor in the pack. The settings resolver and the rules engine refuse a value past the floor and say which pack and law set it. Code holds the check, never the number.
  5. Settings layers. The cascade of 0213 decision 2 is read as four business layers: platform floor, product default, tenant, user. A narrower layer may only tighten a floor. Each key declares live or sandbox (0359 decisions 3 to 5).
  6. Plan catalogue. Each product’s tiers, seat kinds, modules, limits, trials and offers are records in a plan catalogue read by entitlements (0215) and billing (0358). A seat meter counts the principal kinds the catalogue names as seats. An ADR may name the kinds of limit; it never fixes their values.
  7. Seeds. A product’s defaults ship as its seed pack (0325 decision 7, 0190), loaded into the platform and into every new sandbox. Changing a default is a seed change and a data migration, not a release of code.
  8. Thresholds in floors. A platform safety threshold (for example the bulk-send size of 0360 decision 8) is a platform-floor setting. A tenant may make it stricter, never looser.
  9. Tests check shape, not values. A test may check that the seed matches its schema and respects the floors. It never asserts a business number copied from an ADR.

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Consequences

  • A new country is a new pack and its drivers, not a code change. A new price or plan is an admin edit.
  • @stackra/settings needs a floor-aware resolver, and @stackra/rules needs to read pack floors.
  • A market-pack loader, a plan-catalogue model and a seed compiler need homes (see stackra-package-needs.md).
  • ADRs get shorter: they keep the mechanism and point to the seed for values.
  • Reviewers must refuse a pull request that adds a country branch, a price or a policy value to code.

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Enforcement

planned — a lint rule that flags country codes, currency codes and tier names in package source outside packs and tests; a seed-schema test per product; a resolver test that a tenant value past a pack floor is refused with the pack and law named.

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Open questions

  1. Pack home. Whether the market-pack loader is a new package or part of @stackra/settings is not decided.
  2. Pack authorship. Who signs a pack version (counsel, a local reviewer) before it goes live is not decided.
  3. Floor conflicts across packs. For a tenant active in two markets, which pack wins for a shared record (the strictest, or the pack of the record’s legal entity) is not decided.

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Supersedes and sources

Supersedes: none. Adds Notes to 0203, 0242, 0210, 0189, 0343, 0220, 0268, 0192, 0186 and 0360. Sources: owner principle of 2026-10-25 (notes/handover/os/owner-answers.md, last section); notes/handover/adr-hardcoding-findings.md; notes/handover/config-model.md.