Architecture Memory Graph
The artifacts usually exist: requirements, ADRs, models, code, SLOs and runtime signals. What is missing is the chain between them — documents sit in six different systems while people provide the continuity.
The minimum graph of living architecture memory has six nodes joined by links with seven fields: type, version, rationale, owner, evidence, confidence and a review date or trigger. Without those fields formal traceability degrades into a list of links with no architectural meaning, and neither a larger model nor a longer context window compensates.
The diagnostic takes an hour: take a recently completed change, recover the path from trigger to runtime evidence, then walk backward from an incident. If a link survives only in someone's memory, the problem is knowledge infrastructure rather than model choice, and the run produces a backlog of missing link types.
Build the minimum chain: requirement → ADR → component → code and configuration → quality attribute → runtime signal.
Check that every link carries type, version, rationale, owner, evidence, confidence and a review date.
Take one completed change and walk it forward and backward: either both paths replay or the link lives only in someone's memory.