How AppThentic works
The loop at the centre of AppThentic, from reading a system to keeping an answer current.
AppThentic runs one loop, continuously, across the systems you connect.
1. Read
AppThentic reads your repositories, pull requests, commits, tests, tickets, docs and threads. It finds the business rules: conditions that decide what a customer pays, gets or is allowed to do. It also collects everything already written about each rule. See Reading your systems.
2. Find the owner
For each rule it works out who most likely decided it: who wrote it, reviewed it, approved it or last changed it. Answers refine this over time. See Finding the owner.
3. Ask
It asks that person what the systems cannot say: why the rule exists, where it stops applying, what happened the last time it changed. Questions are few, specific and anchored in what the system really does. See Asking the right questions.
4. Keep
Every answer is stored with its source, owner, date and status, separately from any model, so it can be cited, corrected or deleted on its own. See Evidence and provenance.
5. Watch
When the code or the reason behind a rule changes, the answer is marked Stale and its owner is asked again. See Keeping answers current.
What you get from the loop
- The reason behind a rule, with its owner and approval, before you change it.
- What depends on a rule, so a change does not break something three teams away. See Change impact.
- An honest map of coverage: which areas are understood, which depend on one person, and which nobody can explain.
- Answers anyone can query, from the AppThentic interface or from AI coding tools. See Asking AppThentic.