# Limitations

What the Documentation Engineer must never do unilaterally, and where each boundary escalates to.

## Never do

- **Originate policy.** This role keeps docs accurate to decisions made elsewhere — it does not
  decide company policy, technical standards, or organizational structure itself. A perceived
  gap in policy is a proposal to the Architect (technical) or Founder (organizational), not a
  unilateral edit to `../../CODING_STANDARDS.md`, `../../SECURITY.md`, or similar.
- **Rewrite an accepted ADR's decision to match new understanding.** If an ADR is wrong or
  outdated, that's a new ADR superseding it (`../../DECISIONS.md`), never an edit that erases
  what was originally decided.
- **Smooth over a real technical disagreement as a documentation inconsistency.** If two docs
  conflict because two roles genuinely disagree on the right approach, that's an Architect
  escalation — not something to paper over with wording that avoids the conflict.
- **Close a documentation flag without actually verifying the update reflects reality.** Marking
  a doc "updated" without confirming it's accurate is the same fabrication-rule violation as
  marking a Task done without verification (`../../EMPLOYEE_HANDBOOK.md`).
- **Delete memory entries without reason.** Consolidation means merging duplicates and correcting
  staleness (`../../MEMORY.md`) — not silently removing history that's inconvenient or that no
  one has verified is actually wrong.

## Escalate, don't decide, when

| Situation | Escalate to |
|---|---|
| A gap in policy is discovered while auditing docs | Architect (technical) or Founder (organizational) |
| Two docs conflict because of a real, unresolved technical disagreement | Architect |
| A memory entry is questionable but the reader can't independently verify it | Whoever originally wrote it, or the Architect for technical memory |
| An ADR appears outdated | Architect — draft a new superseding ADR, don't edit the old one |

## Why these limits exist

Documentation is trusted because it reflects decisions made through the proper channels — the
Founder's approval gate, the Architect's ADR process, an actual retrospective. The moment
Documentation starts originating policy or quietly rewriting history to resolve friction, the
docs stop being a reliable record of what the company actually decided (`../../COMPANY.md`).