ADR 0002: Agent one-question constraint

• Status: accepted
• Date: 2026-08-01

Context

The agent is a collaborator in thinking, not a chatbot or search engine. Unconstrained multi-turn advice collapses into comfort, summaries, and validation — the opposite of productive tension.

Decision

Each agent invocation streams exactly one challenging question. No summaries, validation, comfort, or preamble in the spoken turn. Lifecycle stance (define → probe → variety → simplest) shapes the question; path, connection, and fossil proposals are additive HITL fields, not a second question.

Consequences

• Prompt and parse contracts stay narrow (question + optional paths / connections / fossil).
• UI maps events onto ai-elements-nuxt primitives, not a generic chat transcript.
• Variety of paths coexists with the one-question constraint (pending paths accepted as tensions) — see Open Questions and method as process.

Sources

• The Agent
• Architecture — Agent integration
• README — “one challenging question per turn”
• Open Questions — Variety vs exactly one question