This folder holds research and analysis that informs the product but is not itself a binding spec. It answers two kinds of question: what is the competitive landscape and where do we win? and where did the design in the rest of the tree actually come from?
It has two parts:
- Living research — dated analysis documents (competitive analysis, market notes). These carry an ISO date in the filename and may be superseded by a newer dated file.
_archive/— the frozen raw analysis JSONs that seeded the entiredocs/tree, plus a provenance map linking each frozen section to the living doc it became.
| Document | What it is |
|---|---|
| managed-inference-business-model-2026-06-03.md | Decision analysis: BYOK vs managed inference (Relavium's own keys, metered by license). ToS/legality, competitive pricing, unit economics, gateway architecture, compliance. Led to the dual-mode decision (ADR-0012). |
| models-dev-dynamic-catalog-enrichment-2026-07-11.md | Design analysis: enriching the model catalog with per-model price + effort/capability data from the open models.dev database. Five alternatives (runtime-dynamic, vendored snapshot, hybrid, status quo, live-only) with pros/cons against local-first, cost-cap safety, and the frozen seam. Informs a future ADR extending ADR-0064. |
| _archive/README.md | Provenance map: which living docs were seeded by which frozen raw-analysis section. The archive itself is frozen — never edited. |
- Dated research uses an ISO-date suffix:
managed-inference-business-model-2026-06-03.md. When the analysis is redone, a new dated file is added rather than overwriting the old one — the dated trail is the point. - Analysis is not a spec. Concrete specs (schemas, contracts, DDL, node types) live in their one canonical home under reference/; analysis links to them rather than restating them (see documentation-style.md §6).
- The archive is one-way and frozen. The living tree never edits the archive, and the archive never gets new "current" content. See _archive/README.md.
For where this folder sits in the overall taxonomy, see documentation-style.md §4.