Living Documentation
The behavior evolves. Its identity and history remain.
For example, a sign-up requirement keeps its identity as the team adds SSO and 2FA through Change Requests. Follow the same artifact through time, then look back at its earlier definitions.
One current product model
Copying specifications into tickets and release documents creates competing versions of the same behavior. Stable artifact identities connect current definitions, historical revisions, and delivery context.
Knowledge is copied as work moves forward
- Each sprint or release creates another document.
- Changes lose the decision and delivery context behind them.
- Related specifications, code and tests drift independently.
- People and AI must search for the version they can trust.
Knowledge evolves through controlled changes
- Stable artifacts keep one address across their lifetime.
- Actual state and historical revisions remain distinct.
- Relations expose the wider impact of a change.
- Every task starts from focused, current product context.
What makes documentation living
Maintain stable identities, revisions, change context, and implementation evidence.
Stable identity
A specification keeps its key while its content evolves. Links, discussions and automations continue to point to the same product concern.
Controlled revisions
Draft, Locked and Deprecated states make the editable version explicit. Historical snapshots preserve what the artifact contained at an earlier point.
Change context
Change Requests group affected artifacts and related work. Project branches let a team prepare parallel changes without obscuring the current main product view.
Delivery feedback
Connections to software units, source files, Test Cases and verification Findings reveal when implementation evidence no longer matches documented intent.
At any point, the team can answer four questions
What is true now?
The actual artifact version provides the current product intent instead of forcing the reader to reconcile several documents.
Why did it change?
Revisions and Change Requests preserve the historical state and the reason a new state was introduced.
What is affected?
Relations lead from product intent to connected specifications, software units, source files, tests and delivery work.
What context should AI use?
Reqode MCP supplies the current project, branch, artifact and architecture context instead of an unbounded repository search.
Maintain the description behind a change
Keep specifications, change scope, and verification connected as the product evolves.
