Resources
External reading and community-maintained tool lists. adr.zone does not run rankings or scores; we point to public references you can verify yourself.
Community hubs
- adr.github.io — home of the adr GitHub organization: definitions, media references, and links to practices and templates. A good first stop for vocabulary and history.
- Decision capturing tools (adr.github.io) — a broad, alphabetically sorted list of CLIs, editors, and integrations. Maturity varies; follow each project’s own README.
- ADR templates — index of template families and diagramming of relationships between formats.
Encyclopedic & survey articles
- Software architecture (Wikipedia) — high-level context for how architecture, documentation, and design decisions relate. Not ADR-specific, but useful for readers new to the space.
- Michael Nygard’s 2011 post Documenting architecture decisions — popularized the short status / context / decision / decision outcome shape many teams call “Nygard ADRs.”
Tooling (sample pointers — not an endorsement list)
The adr tooling page groups utilities by template family. Below is a small, stable subset so you can explore quickly; the canonical full list is always on adr.github.io.
Nygard-style / generic file workflows
- adr-tools (bash) — classic CLI for numbered ADRs; many ports exist (Go, Node, etc.) on the main list.
- adr-viewer — render a folder of Markdown ADRs as a static site.
MADR-oriented
- ADR Manager (web) — form-based editing tied to GitHub.
- Backstage ADR plugin — search and explore ADRs inside a Backstage developer portal.
- adr-log — keep an index in sync with a folder of ADRs.
For a complete, up-to-date matrix (including MADR, embedded ADRs, and more), use the source list: adr.github.io/adr-tooling.
Compare decision-record formats · ADRs and LLM-assisted development · Home