ADR-0016: Golden templates vs disposable demo vs client pilot

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

Context

The word "demo" was being used for three different things with different lifecycles and purposes. Conflating them risks treating a permanent, high-leverage asset as throwaway (or vice versa). This ADR names them apart.

Decision

Three distinct things: 1. Golden template — the reference build of a product (e.g. the first email-triage build). Permanent and high-leverage: every future client's copy of that product is cloned from it, so its quality propagates to every client. Not throwaway; built well, deliberately. Lives in staging. The first golden template (email-triage) is built against Octopodia's own inbox — so client-zero (dogfooding our own inbox) and building the template are the same activity, and the tuned result is the template. 2. Disposable sales demo — a demo-mode stack (ADR-0013): fake data, sandbox connectors, capped autonomy, spun up to show prospects and wiped on a schedule (e.g. weekly). Throwaway by design; a separate stack from the golden template. 3. Client pilot — a pilot-mode tenant (ADR-0013): real client data, scope-limited to one module, Assist-only, time-boxed, in production. Post-BOR, per client.

Consequences

The first week's build is the golden template, not a throwaway — it must be built with care because its quality is copied to every client; building it on staging against our own inbox serves three purposes at once (proof-on-real-infra, client-zero, and the reference clients clone); the disposable sales demo and the client pilot are separate, later work; golden templates stay minimal and grow as clients pull features.

Alternatives considered

• Treating the first build as a throwaway demo — rejected: it is the template clients inherit.
• One combined "demo" concept — rejected: three lifecycles (permanent / weekly-wiped / time-boxed-per-client) can't share one treatment.