Article 02

Versioned Architecture Standards Without Rewriting History

A controlled PR demonstrates that draft policy does not govern delivery, newly active policy applies to new reviews, and historical reviews stay bound to the exact standard version used at the time.

ArkSentinel AI · 18 Article Series

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Article 2 of 18 · Current focus

Follow the progression from pull-request governance through enterprise architecture intelligence, developer enablement, evidence, and proactive governance.

Article 1PR Governance

Article 2Policy VersioningCurrent focus

Article 3Organizational Governance Article 4Accountable Architectural Approval Article 5Portfolio Intelligence Article 6Governance Cost Article 7Architecture Risk Article 8Drift & Technical Debt Article 9Cross-Repository Intelligence Article 10ADR Governance Article 11AI Architect Article 12From Violation to Fix Article 13Compliance & Evidence Reports Article 14Governance Data to Decisions Article 15Architecture Audit Trail Article 16Enterprise Governance Platform Article 17Proactive Architecture Governance Article 18Beyond Pull Requests

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1. Introduce a stronger version as Draft

MSG-001 v1 remains Active while a more explicit idempotency policy is created as v2 Draft. The new policy is visible without affecting current governance.

MSG-001 v2 exists as Draft while v1 remains Active in immutable version history.

2. PR #3 is still evaluated against v1

A new PR is reviewed before v2 activation. ArkSentinel explicitly records MSG-001 v1 as the exact version used for the review.

PR #3 uses MSG-001 v1 because v2 is still Draft.

3. Activate v2; deprecate v1

Policy governance changes intentionally: v2 becomes Active and v1 becomes Deprecated. The old version is preserved rather than overwritten.

MSG-001 v2 Active; MSG-001 v1 Deprecated.

4. A new review uses v2

A new commit creates a fresh review event. ArkSentinel now records MSG-001 v2 as the exact version used for that review.

The new review uses MSG-001 v2 while other standards remain on their active versions.

5. Remediation passes under v2

The consumer is updated to meet the stronger active policy. The final review reaches 100% compliance with zero findings and still records MSG-001 v2.

Successful review: MSG-001 v2 used, findings 0.

6. Human approval and merge remain traceable

Bob approves and Alice merges. The final lifecycle remains tied to the exact policy version that governed the successful review.

Final merged state with human approval and governance evidence preserved.

Architecture standards should evolve. Governance history should not.

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