D039 - TOML for people, JSON for data, no database

Status: decided Date: 2026-09-26

Anything a person edits - stub policy, settings, title files, knowledge - is TOML. Machine- written data - the symbol database, traces, run reports - is JSON. Nothing uses a database.

Why: hand-editing the stub policy is the bisection loop, so readability is a requirement. The machine-written files are large flat lists that tools read whole. Nothing here queries data in a way a file does not serve.

Rejected:

• SQLite: an engine and a schema for data read whole.
• One format for everything: either hostile to editing or verbose for bulk.