Complete the Model-Strategy ADR
Understand how to consolidate AI model strategy decisions into an architecture decision record (ADR) that meets review board standards. Explore how to link model selection, deployment topology, routing policies, and lifecycle controls into a single, auditable document that enforces compliance, manages risks, and provides explicit evidence for evaluation and governance.
Every model-strategy decision so far, the matrix, the topology, the routing policy, the pinning and upgrade plan, the adaptation call, was made in its own lesson. None of it is reviewable until it lives in one packet a board can actually approve. A model strategy architecture decision record (ADR) ties our copilot’s model choices to explicit constraints, evidence requirements, and operating controls in one reviewable packet.
State a single decision and its scope in the ADR to meet acceptance for this chapter artifact. Name the decision audience: the architecture review board, plus security, platform, and the product owner. Make every downstream commitment inspectable: the scored matrix that justifies the selected option, the deployment topology choice constraining where inference can run, an initial routing policy constraining which models can be invoked under which conditions, and the lifecycle controls constraining when a model can change.
The ADR is a contract specifying what will be validated later through evaluation gates, security testing, and telemetry, plus the triggers that force a re-review once an assumption changes.
The following visual shows a one-page ADR structure and where ...
