Designed documentation spine for Python repos

• Day: 2026-05-09
• Time: 10:59 to 11:45
• Project: Dev
• Workspace: WP 2: Operational
• Status: Completed
• Priority: MEDIUM
• Assignee: Matías Nehuen Iglesias
• Tags: Documentation, Architecture, Runbooks, Knowledge-Management, Python, Governance

Description

Session Goal

Establish a documentation strategy for messy, script-heavy Python repositories so the codebase can be understood, governed, and safely evolved without relying on ad hoc tribal knowledge.

Key Activities

• Proposed a two-layer documentation model:
  • Generated reference docs as the API-level source of truth.
  • Narrative docs for orientation, entrypoints, contracts, runbooks, and operational context.
• Framed documentation as a repeatable production pipeline across multiple repos: inventory existing materials, classify scripts and assets, define the system spine, and then generate/maintain docs consistently.
• Distinguished between different repo complexity profiles and architectural roles, especially for media_monitor and [[accounting]]-backend, to avoid forcing a single documentation pattern onto different systems.
• Defined a documentation authority model with explicit hierarchy:
  • current doctrine / current-state docs
  • transition memos
  • historical diagnostics
  • legacy runbooks
  • active implementation guides
• Recommended docs/current_state.md as the primary entry point and suggested status labels / supersession links so older notes do not compete with the current architecture.
• Assessed runbooks as a migration history rather than a flat manual, emphasizing lane-based operations, observability, handoff, and public-site consumption.
• Reviewed scripts/ governance in the MAL repo, separating active architecture utilities, compatibility wrappers, and archive candidates; proposed documenting before moving files.
• Reframed the MAL codebase as an artifact pipeline with levels for runtime data, buses, indexes, and public snapshots, identifying the enrich lane as the least mature seam.
• Hardened the editorial subsystem conceptually around news_piece_brief.v1, with PromptFlow treated as runtime-only and editorial_latest.[[json]] as the human decision surface.

Achievements

• Clarified a coherent documentation and governance model for transitional Python repositories.
• Established a practical path for making architecture legible through a documentation spine, truth hierarchy, and staged artifact mapping.
• Identified concrete repo-level documentation artifacts to create next, especially docs/current_state.md and scripts/README.md.
• Produced a clearer view of which parts of the MAL architecture are stable, transitional, or still underdeveloped.

Pending Tasks

• Create the initial markdown artifacts (docs/current_state.md, scripts/README.md, and related runbook/index pages).
• Inventory scripts and classify them into active utilities, wrappers, and archive candidates before any file moves.
• Add explicit status labels and supersession links across docs to preserve the truth stack.
• Align editorial wrappers, indexes, and fallback policy with the news_piece_brief.v1 contract.
• Verify the documentation spine with cheap health checks and repo-level entrypoint validation.

Evidence

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• event_ids: []