Engineering Knowledge Reference Architecture

Purpose

This specification describes how engineering knowledge exists within AAOE: how it is created, governed, organized, evolved, and consumed. Engineering knowledge is a governed engineering asset, not passive documentation — it is produced, evaluated, and connected under the same governance that applies to any other engineering artifact.

This is a logical architecture. It does not define repositories, databases, search engines, documentation tools, or implementation technologies.

Architectural Principles

This architecture reuses principles already established elsewhere in AAOE:

• Knowledge continuously evolves.
• Evidence precedes authority.
• Governance preserves knowledge.
• Traceability preserves context.
• Specifications define canonical guidance.

Knowledge Types

• Observations — notable occurrences encountered during engineering work, the raw material knowledge begins from.
• Discoveries — observations captured as evidence-based, traceable records, as defined by the Discovery Lifecycle.
• Architectural Decisions — evaluated discoveries that have been approved as engineering direction, as defined by the Architectural Decision Lifecycle.
• Specifications — accepted decisions formalized into canonical guidance, as defined by the Specification Lifecycle.
• Work Orders — the scoped delegation of approved architecture into implementation.
• Implementation Reports — the standard record of what a Work Order produced.
• Architecture Reviews — the evaluation of an Implementation Report against architectural intent.
• Releases — the integration of approved work into canonical state, as defined by Release Management.
• Reference Architectures — reusable architectural patterns built on accepted specifications.
• Case Studies — evidence from applied AAOE work.
• Guides — practical adoption and contribution guidance.
• Glossary — shared terminology used consistently across all of the above.

Knowledge Lifecycle

Observation
        ↓
Discovery
        ↓
Decision
        ↓
Specification
        ↓
Implementation
        ↓
Validated Knowledge

Knowledge gains authority incrementally: an Observation carries no authority on its own; a Discovery carries evidence; a Decision carries approved direction; a Specification carries canonical guidance; and Implementation, once reviewed and released, becomes Validated Knowledge that can inform the next Observation. Each step is a governance boundary, not an automatic progression — advancing requires the approval each respective specification defines.

Canonical Knowledge

Knowledge is canonical when it is:

• Approved — accepted through the governance defined for its type.
• Governed — subject to the rules of its owning specification.
• Traceable — connected to the evidence and authority that produced it, per the Traceability Model.
• Versioned — identifiable at a specific state, per the Specification Lifecycle.
• Preserved — retained through revision and supersession rather than overwritten.

Knowledge Relationships

Every knowledge artifact references the artifact that justifies it — Discoveries reference Observations, Decisions reference Discoveries, Specifications reference Decisions, and so on, as defined by the Traceability Model. Engineering knowledge therefore forms a connected graph, not a collection of isolated documents: any artifact can be understood by following its relationships back to what produced it.

Knowledge Consumers

• Human Architects consume knowledge to ground new architectural intent in what is already approved.
• Human Reviewers consume knowledge to evaluate implementation against architectural intent.
• Release Managers consume knowledge to confirm integration criteria are met.
• AI Agents consume knowledge as the context delegated to them through a Work Order.
• Future Engineering Tools may consume knowledge to support work not yet anticipated by this architecture, without changing what canonical knowledge is.

Knowledge Producers

• Human Architects produce architectural intent and Work Orders.
• AI Agents produce implementation output and Implementation Reports.
• Reviews produce approval decisions.
• Releases produce the canonical state that results from integration.

Producing knowledge does not imply authority over it. An artifact gains authority only through the governance defined for its type, not through the act of having produced it.

Knowledge Governance

Knowledge is protected from uncontrolled evolution by the same governance already established for each knowledge type: Discovery Governance, Decision Governance, Specification Governance, Implementation Governance, and Release Governance, as defined by the AAOE Meta-Model. This architecture introduces no additional governance mechanism; it describes how those existing mechanisms apply to knowledge as an asset.

Extensibility

New knowledge types may be introduced as AAOE's domains grow, provided each new type identifies its upstream authority and the governance that applies to it, preserving the architectural consistency this specification describes.

Future Evolution

Engineering knowledge is expected to grow in volume and connection over time. This growth must not break existing traceability or governance: new knowledge extends the graph without severing the relationships that already exist within it.