ADR 0036: The overview orders branches by the default branch's policy

Status: accepted · Date: 2026-10-20

Deciders: the operator, planning the board’s and the herdr plugin’s branch order, 2026-10-20. Sources: agentplot/blueprints:design/sluice/requirements.md clauses 27, 56, C.7; rules core.1, core.15; ADRs 0007, 0046.

Context and problem statement

The overview lists the branches with records in name order, so bolt/* comes before main, and the plugins show them so. A repository’s .config/sluice.toml names its branches in an order of its own, and the overview contract asks that branches[] come in that order. Each branch reads its policy from its own revision (rule core.15), so the branches may disagree. Whose policy gives the order?

Considered options

1. Each branch’s own policy, merged.
2. The default branch’s policy, the repository’s HEAD.
3. A setting of the host’s.

Decision outcome

Option 2. The default branch is where a repository’s policy is written and read by a person. The overview reads it at the default branch’s revision as its records last saw it, never fetching (ADR 0046), or at its local revision when it has no records. A branch’s place is the index of the [branches] table its gate comes from, so a pattern’s matches stand together in name order; branches no table names come last. The policy keeps its tables in file order.

Option 1 has no single order when two branches’ policies disagree. Option 3 puts a fact of the repository in each host’s settings.

Consequences

• Rule core.15 holds: every branch’s gate is still read from its own revision. The order decides nothing, and no round, gate, landing or submission reads it; core.15’s Details say it is not ruled out.
• The default branch is read from git in a profile (rule core.1), the read the pull-request driver already made, moved beside the others.
• A repository with no default branch, or one whose default branch holds no policy, lists its branches in name order.