Back to concepts

The Triad

The aDNA Triad — every project's three organizing directories

Overview

The triad is aDNA’s universal organizing principle: every piece of project knowledge belongs in exactly one of three directories — what/, how/, or who/ — determined by which question it answers.

Why This Matters

Imagine you’re moving into a new house with hundreds of boxes. You could label them by room (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom), or you could just stack them randomly in the garage and hunt for things later. aDNA’s triad is the labeling system — but instead of rooms, it uses three questions:

  • What do we know? — facts, research, reference material, decisions
  • How do we work? — plans, processes, templates, session logs
  • Who is involved? — people, teams, roles, coordination notes

Every document, every note, every piece of context fits under exactly one question. There’s no ambiguity, no “miscellaneous” drawer. A new team member — human or AI agent — can walk into any aDNA project and immediately know where to find things, because the structure is always the same.

Three categories is the sweet spot. Two would be too coarse (you’d constantly ask “but is this a knowledge thing or an operations thing?”). Four or more creates sorting paralysis (“does this go in Knowledge, Reference, Context, or Documentation?”). Three maps cleanly to the three dimensions every project has: its knowledge, its operations, and its people.

How It Works

The triad is defined in the aDNA Standard §3.1 as the what/how/who ontology. It is normative: every conformant aDNA instance MUST organize content into these three top-level directories.

The Three Legs

LegQuestion TestContainsSpec Reference
what/WHAT does this project know?Context library, decisions, domain entities, reference material§5.1
how/HOW does this project work?Missions, sessions, templates, pipelines, skills, backlog§5.3
who/WHO is involved?Governance policies, team records, coordination notes§5.2

The Question Test

When you’re unsure where a file belongs, apply the question test (§3.1): “Is this about WHAT we know, HOW we work, or WHO is involved?”

ContentQuestionTriad Leg
A research summary on ancient DNA extractionWHAT do we know?what/context/
A mission plan for building a documentation siteHOW do we work?how/missions/
A note coordinating handoff between two agentsWHO is involved?who/coordination/

The test always produces exactly one answer. If it feels ambiguous, the content is trying to do two things — split it.

Deployment Forms

The triad has two physical layouts (§3.2–3.4):

  • Bare triad — what/, how/, who/ sit at project root. Used when aDNA IS the primary content (knowledge bases, documentation vaults).
  • Embedded triad — the triad lives inside .agentic/ at repo root. Used when adding agent support to an existing codebase.

The ontology is identical in both forms. Only the nesting differs.

Why Three?

The standard is explicit about this (§3.1): “Three categories are sufficient because they map to the three dimensions of any project: its knowledge, its operations, and its people. Additional categories create sorting ambiguity.”

This isn’t arbitrary minimalism — it’s a design constraint. Every project, from a solo research notebook to a multi-team enterprise platform, has exactly these three dimensions. The triad makes them explicit and navigable.

See It In Action

You’re inside a working triad right now. Look at the root of this vault (aDNA.aDNA/):

aDNA.aDNA/
├── what/     ← You are here (what/concepts/concept_triad.md)
├── how/      ← Campaigns, missions, sessions, templates, skills
└── who/      ← Governance, coordination

This file — concept_triad.md — lives in what/concepts/ because it answers the question “WHAT does this project know?” It knows about the triad. The mission plan that scheduled the creation of this file lives in how/campaigns/campaign_rosetta/missions/ because it answers “HOW does this project work?” The governance policies that define how agents operate live in who/governance/ because they answer “WHO is involved and what authority do they have?”

The structure demonstrates itself. Navigate up two levels from this file and you’ll see the triad in the directory listing. That’s the point — the architecture is visible, not hidden behind abstractions.