Portfolio Portal
Governance living owner: Azwaan reviewed: 2026-07-05

Capability Decision Matrix

The standard reference for architectural placement decisions — the quick lookup companion to the Capability Decision Framework. Answer the question; get the destination. When multiple rows apply, choose the lowest reusable layer that honestly fits (Principle 9).

Question → destination

# Architectural question If yes → destination Layer Evidence anchor
1 Is it shared AI behaviour / reusable competence many repos would invoke? Shared Skills L1 cap-reusable-ai-skills
2 Does it generate reusable intelligence (capture → structure → retrieve)? Intelligence Platform L2 cap-knowledge-intelligence
3 Is it a published artefact — versioned, immutable, pinned by consumers? Intelligence Products L3 cap-intelligence-productization
4 Is it reusable across ≥2 ventures as a service (assessment, opportunity, retrieval, evaluation)? Platform Services (proposed) L4 ADR 0005
5 Is it customer/venture-specific (an app or agent for one venture)? Venture / Application L5 Portfolio Overview
6 Is it a customer-facing experience? Customer-facing Solution L6 Portfolio Overview
7 Is it orchestration / automation of the portal? Orchestrator skill (Docs/Automation) Docs orchestrator SPEC
8 Is it infrastructure? Within the owning platform (not a new layer) (host’s layer) website-intelligence-lab
9 Is it documentation / architecture governance? portfolio-portal Docs cap-architecture-governance
10 Is it evaluation / benchmarking of engines? Platform Services (evaluation) (proposed) / today the lab (L2) L4/L2 cap-reproducible-evaluation

Disambiguation matrix (when two answers seem to apply)

Tension Deciding question Rule
Skill vs Platform Service Is it knowledge/method or a running service with a contract? Method → Skill (L1); running contract → Platform Service (L4)
Intelligence Platform vs Intelligence Products Does it produce or is it the published output? Producer → L2; published artefact → L3 (producer/consumer split, ADR 0003)
Platform Service vs Venture app Would a second venture use it unchanged? Yes → Platform Service (L4); no → Venture (L5)
New repo vs feature in existing repo Does it have a distinct owner + change-rate + one-paragraph rationale? Yes → maybe new repo (pass four-part test); no → extend an existing repo
Pack vs code Is it data/intelligence or behaviour? Data → pack (L3); behaviour → skill (L1) or service (L4)

Placement heuristics (evidence-derived)

  • Domain expansion is a pack, not a repo. New verticals for an existing capability are new packs (cleaning, travel proved this) — do not spawn a repo per vertical.
  • Reusable ⇒ platform, not venture. If a second venture would use it, it is a Platform Service — never bury it in a venture repo (the assessment-engine trap).
  • One source of truth per concept. Before placing, check the Concept Ownership Registry — if the concept already has an owner, extend it rather than duplicating (avoid the dual-scoring trap).
  • Infrastructure has no layer of its own. It belongs to the platform it serves.

How to use this as the standard

  1. Run the proposal through the four-part test.
  2. Find the first matching question above → destination.
  3. Resolve tensions with the disambiguation matrix.
  4. If still ambiguous → architecture review + an ADR.
  5. Record the placement decision (ADR for anything structural).