ADR-0012: Client exit / data ownership

• Status: Accepted
• Date: 2026-07-25
• Deciders: El

Context

A residency and trust-selling business needs a clean exit story, without accidentally handing over IP.

Decision

On exit, clients leave with their tenant stack and data (full export, or handover of the isolated stack). The brain, vertical templates, and engine logic remain Octopodia IP. The "config" a client owns is their business settings and rules — not the template or engine logic. An export/offboarding path is a first-class future capability, built when a contract or client requires it. The ownership line (their config vs our IP) must be contractually explicit.

Consequences

A strong "your data isn't hostage" trust story; the Compose-per-tenant design makes a clean exit possible; the config alone is inert without the engine (the commercial line); needs a contractual definition of "config" before promising anyone their configs.

Alternatives considered

• Owning the client's data / lock-in — rejected: against positioning.
• Handing over engine and templates on exit — rejected: gives away the product.