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Decision records

These are short records of decisions that shape WP Updates Notifier: what was decided, why, and what it costs. They exist so the reasons outlive the issue threads they came from.

A record is not a plan or a specification. It describes a decision that has been made. If a decision changes, the old record stays, its status says which record replaced it, and a new record explains the change.

Format

Each record is a file named NNNN-short-title.md, numbered in the order the records were written. It has:

  • a title, # NNNN. Title;
  • a line with the status (Accepted, or Superseded by a later record) and the date of the decision;
  • Context: the problem and what forced a choice;
  • Decision: what was chosen;
  • Consequences: the good and the bad;
  • Considered options, where there were real alternatives;
  • References: the issues and pull requests where the decision was made.

The date is when the decision was made, not when the record was written.

Index

Number Title Status Date
0001 Licence the plugin GPL-2.0-or-later Accepted 2026-10-13
0002 Require PHP 7.4 and WordPress 6.7 Accepted 2026-10-12
0003 Rename the main file without a migration stub Accepted 2026-10-17
0004 A public, versioned module API, used by the built-in modules Accepted 2026-10-12
0005 Keep settings, run state and channels in separate options Accepted 2026-10-12
0006 Drop Slack in 2.0.0 and keep its settings Accepted 2026-10-14
0007 Allow settings and secrets from outside the database Accepted 2026-10-12
0008 Support single sites only in 2.0.0 Accepted 2026-10-17
0009 No lock against overlapping update checks Accepted 2026-10-18
0010 Leave WordPress's own auto-update emails alone Accepted 2026-10-19
0011 Settings screen to WCAG 2.2 AA, without JavaScript Accepted 2026-10-18
0012 Security tooling is free, deterministic and scripted Accepted 2026-10-18
0013 Make releases verifiable Accepted 2026-10-19
0014 Publish the documentation at wpun.cariss.dev with MkDocs Material and mike Accepted 2026-10-20
0015 Conventional Commits and a linear history Accepted 2026-10-13
0016 Remind about pending updates, per channel Accepted 2026-10-23
0017 Bundle translations as .l10n.php files only Accepted 2026-10-24
0018 Generate readme.txt at build time and do not commit it Accepted 2026-10-25