What carries forward.

What they are

Operating decisions your firm has agreed, with their rationale and scope, kept distinct from the reusable standard they may eventually update.

Record one

“We decided” writes a decision with rationale, status and date. Decisions are never edited in place; a change supersedes the earlier one and keeps the history, so a proposal is never mistaken for an approval.

Try it with Norma

Norma, record this decision: [what was decided, by whom, and why]. Write it with its rationale, status and date, and tell me which earlier decision it supersedes, if any.

Keep it current

Supersede rather than delete. A reversed decision stays legible as history, which is what the next reviewer needs.

What it is

A project is a folder your firm owns. PROJECT.md holds the sourced current facts; decisions holds the durable reasoning; tasks, meetings and site reports each keep their own typed record. There is no shared project database behind Arch Studio and no synchronization between Claude and ChatGPT; both read the same files.

The top of a real project file · skills/project/templates/PROJECT.md

# Project — {{PROJECT_NAME}}

> Every fact carries a source and date. Decision rationale lives only in `decisions/`.

## Identity

| Field | Value | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project ID | {{PROJECT_ID}} | project setup | {{CREATED_DATE}} |
| Type | {{PROJECT_TYPE}} | project setup | {{CREATED_DATE}} |
| Status | {{PROJECT_STATUS}} | project setup | {{CREATED_DATE}} |

## Project records

- Decision records: [decisions/](decisions/)
- Meeting minutes: [meetings/](meetings/)

Set one up

Ask Project records to initialize a project: display name, internal or client, status and a code convention. The preview writes nothing; apply creates the folder, the project file and the registers, then reads them back. Facts carry a source and a date so the next person can judge whether they are still current.

Try it with Norma

Norma, set up a project record for [project name]: [internal or client], status [status], client [client]. Preview the files first, then create them after I confirm.

• Project records→

Change or remove

Update a fact with its new source and date, or ask the assistant to and read the diff before it writes. Remove a project by deleting the folder; nothing about it remains in the service, because nothing about it was ever sent there.

Ask Norma to start it

Norma, update this project fact: [fact], source [source], date [date]. Show me the diff before you write it.

What they are

Tasks, meeting records, selections, decisions and issued deliverables, each in its own record with an owner and a status. A conversation is not a record; something is kept when it is deliberately recorded and reviewed.

How the assistant is told to treat the records · skills/project/templates/AGENTS.md

# {{PROJECT_NAME}} — Project Instructions

- Read `PROJECT.md` before project work.
- Treat `decisions/*.md` as the sole decision source of truth.
- Before making scope commitments, read `agreement/AGREEMENT.md` when it exists.
- Preserve typed ownership for meetings, site reports, tasks, plans, and time.
- Use project-relative links and never persist machine-specific absolute paths.

Use them

A session starts from the records, not from a summary. Minutes carry decisions and actions; the task register carries owners and dates; the assistant reads them before project work because the project instructions say so.

Try it with Norma

Norma, turn these meeting notes into minutes with decisions and action candidates: [paste notes]. Save them to this project’s meetings folder and tell me which actions you propose adding to the task register.

Add a record type

A new register needs an owner skill, a file location and a status vocabulary. Keep typed ownership: the skill that writes a record type is the only one that changes it.

What it is

A handoff with next actions, unresolved questions and links to the work. The next person, or the next session, resumes from those files and verifies what has changed.

Hand off

Ask for a handoff at the end of a session. It names the records to open, the decisions in force, the open questions and the next review action.

Try it with Norma

Norma, prepare a handoff for this project: what was done this session, which records changed, what remains open and what the next person should do first.

Where it ends

Usage records in the hosted service are separate from your project files: bounded events about the connection, never prompts, outputs or files, removed on account deletion or on request.

• Privacy and data handling→