Architecture Principles

Executive Summary

Architecture Principles define the rules that future Algosure architecture and engineering work must follow. These principles translate Blueprint rules into technical governance.

Why This Exists

Without principles, implementation choices can undermine the Blueprint. Architecture must preserve domain ownership, human accountability, explainability, auditability, security, and modularity.

Owner

The owner is the Chief Product Officer and Enterprise Architect.

Business Value

Principles reduce rework, make decisions easier to review, and protect Algosure from architectural drift.

Principle Map

flowchart TD
    Domain[Domain First]
    Owner[One Concept One Owner]
    Bounded[Bounded Contexts]
    Event[Event First]
    AI[AI First]
    Explain[Explainability]
    Human[Human Approval]
    Modular[Modular Monolith First]
    API[API First]
    Contract[Contract First]
    Security[Secure by Design]
    Tenant[Multi-Tenant by Design]
    Obs[Observability by Default]
    Audit[Auditability]

    Domain --> Owner
    Owner --> Bounded
    Bounded --> Event
    Event --> AI
    AI --> Explain
    Explain --> Human
    Bounded --> Modular
    Modular --> API
    API --> Contract
    Security --> Tenant
    Tenant --> Obs
    Obs --> Audit

Principles

Principle	Architecture Meaning
Domain First	Architecture starts with Domains, not screens, tables, integrations, or infrastructure.
One Concept One Owner	Each business concept has one owning Domain or Practice. Duplication requires explicit architecture review.
Bounded Contexts	Domain boundaries must map to explicit technical boundaries.
Event First	Cross-domain coordination should prefer business events over direct ownership leakage.
AI First	AI capabilities are native to the architecture and aligned to AIOS, Digital Professionals, and Intelligence.
Explainability	AI recommendations and automated decisions must support explanation, evidence, confidence, and assumptions.
Human Approval	High-impact actions must support explicit human approval workflows.
Modular Monolith First	The initial architecture should favor a well-structured modular monolith aligned to Spring Boot Modulith principles.
Microservices Later	Microservices should emerge only when boundaries, scale, ownership, and operational maturity justify them.
API First	External and significant internal contracts must be designed deliberately and governed.
Contract First	Contracts between modules, APIs, events, and integrations must be stable, versioned, and reviewed.
Secure by Design	Security is part of architecture, not a late-stage control.
Zero Trust	Access must be explicit, verified, least-privilege, and continuously governed.
Multi-Tenant by Design	Tenant context and isolation must be present in architecture decisions from the start.
Observability by Default	Architecture must support logs, metrics, traces, audit records, and operational insight.
Idempotency	Commands, events, workflows, and integrations must account for safe retries and duplicate delivery.
Backward Compatibility	Changes to public contracts, events, data, and workflows must protect existing consumers.
Configuration over Code	Operational variation should be configurable where it does not weaken governance or clarity.
Convention over Configuration	Defaults and conventions should reduce complexity where the operating model is stable.
Testability	Architecture must make unit, module, contract, integration, workflow, and security testing practical.
Auditability	Material actions, decisions, approvals, recommendations, events, and data changes must be traceable.

Governance Rule

Any future architecture decision that violates a principle must document the exception, rationale, business impact, risk, approval owner, and review date.