Defined boundaries for shared knowledge system repos

• Day: 2026-05-19
• Time: 11:10 to 11:20
• Project: Dev
• Workspace: WP 2: Operational
• Status: Completed
• Priority: HIGH
• Assignee: Matías Nehuen Iglesias
• Tags: Architecture, Modularization, Contracts, Knowledge-System, Refactoring, Boundary-Design

Description

Session Goal

Clarify the architectural boundaries inside Matías’ knowledge-system stack and decide how to split a monolithic repository into a reusable substrate plus domain-specific verticals.

Key Activities

• Reviewed multiple boundary-analysis notes around KB, paper-kb, openalex-gui, and abstract-scroller.
• Applied a contract-first decomposition approach instead of treating the work as a full rewrite.
• Mapped responsibilities across repos:
  • KB as the shared knowledge-processing substrate.
  • paper-kb as the scientific-paper vertical owning ingestion, API, and frontend workflows.
  • openalex-gui as a discovery/search layer that exports selected references into paper-kb.
  • abstract-scroller as a generic review surface for prepared summaries.
• Identified the need to stabilize shared schemas and dependency rules, especially around chunk_set.v1, chunking, embeddings, vectorstore, and run records.
• Repeatedly emphasized seam definition, responsibility mapping, and migration contracts to avoid verticals re-implementing substrate logic.

Achievements

• Established a clean conceptual split between shared core processing and vertical application layers.
• Clarified that the main refactor target is boundary definition and dependency hygiene, not a platform-wide rewrite.
• Produced a reusable architectural pattern: inventory → seam identification → extraction/migration.
• Narrowed the role of each repo enough to support future refactoring and integration planning.

Pending Tasks

• Document the dependency rules between substrate and vertical repos.
• Formalize shared artifact schemas, starting with chunk_set.v1.
• Define bridge contracts for export/import snapshots between openalex-gui, paper-kb, and KB.
• Decide which reusable OpenAlex query/ID logic should be extracted into a shared core package.
• Convert the boundary map into an actionable migration plan for the next session.

Evidence

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• event_ids: []