| title | Decision Capturing Tools | |
|---|---|---|
| toc | true | |
| categories |
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The following lists are rather inclusive and sorted alphabetically. Please find out about the status and the maturity of the list entries for yourself by following the links. {: .prompt-info }
- ADG (Architectural Decision Guidance), a command-line tool written in Go for modeling, managing, and reusing architectural decisions in a lightweight and structured way (step-by-step usage example in this Medium story). Template options: Nygard, MADR (basic), QOC.
- adr-kit, an ADR toolkit for AI coding agents (Claude Code plugin plus dependency-free Python CLIs, also usable from Cursor, Copilot, and Codex CLI). Beyond authoring, it enforces accepted decisions against diffs at commit and PR time, detects decision drift and stale ADRs, ranks the ADRs relevant to a coding task, and ships a small MCP server. Stores a Nygard-derived seven-section template; imports MADR and Nygard sets via guided migration.
- dotnet-adr - A cross platform .NET Global Tool for creating and managing Architectural Decision Records (ADR).
- ReflectRally, a collaborative web-based application for creating, discussing and maintaining Architectural Decision Records with structured workflows, ownership and review processes.
| Name | MADR Version | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| adr-log | 2.1.2 | CLI to keep an index.md file updated with all ADRs |
| ADR Manager | 2.1.2 | Web-based UI connecting to GitHub to directly edit ADRs in a form-based way |
| ADR Manager VS Code Extension | 2.1.2 | Visual Studio Code (VS Code) extension |
| Backstage ADR plugin | 2.1.2 and 3.x | plugin to explore and search ADRs within a backstage based developer portal. Search at scale across mutliple orgs/repos |
| Hugo Markdown ADR Tools | 2.1.2. | CLI to create and update ADRs |
| Log4brains | 2.1.2 without numbers in the filename | Supports both nice rendering of ADRs and creation of ADRs in a command line. |
| pyadr | 2.1.2 | CLI to help with an ADR process lifecycle (proposal/acceptance/rejection/deprecation/superseding) |
- adr-tools - bash scripts to manage ADRs in the Nygard format. example.
- Ansible script to install adr-tools: ansible-adr-tools
- C# rewrite: adr-cli
- Go rewrite: adr
- Java rewrite: adr-j
- ESM Node.js port: adr-tools
- Node.js rewrite: adr
- PHP version: phpadr
- Powershell module: adr-ps
- Python rewrite: adr-tools-python
- Python rewrite: ADR-py
- Another Powershell module: ArchitectureDecisionRecords
- Rust rewrite: adrs
- adr-viewer - python application to generate a website from a set of ADRs.
- architectural-decision: PHP library to create ADRs using PHP8 Attributes.
- Loqbooq: Commerical Web App with Slack integration to record ADR-inspired decision logs
- Talo: CLI (and dotnet tool) to manage and export ADRs, RFCs and custom software design document types.
- adr-viewer - renders ADRs in a web page
- (Java) Embedded Architectural Decision Records, which shows how a distributed AD log can be embedded in Java Code via ADR annotations.
- ArchUnit: unit tests for architecture
- docToolchain: docToolchain is an implementation of the docs-as-code approach for software architecture plus some additional automation.
- Structurizr: Structurizr is a collection of tooling to help you visualise, document and explore your software architecture using the C4 model.
- adr-log: Generates an architectural decision log out of MADRs.
- ADMentor Architectural Decision Modeling Add-In for Sparx Enterprise Architect
- eadlsync: Synchronizes embedded architectural decision records with a repository of architectural decisions.
- SE Repo: Software Engineering Repository. A repository for versioning software engineering artifacts, which can be architectural decisions, patterns, and others.