How to use the Architecture decision record template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Architecture decision record template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Architecture decision record”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“One decision per record. Never edit an accepted ADR: write a new one that supersedes it.”
Fill in each part
- Context The forces at play: what is true now and why a decision is needed.
- Table Columns: Option · Pros · Cons · Effort
- Decision What we will do, in one or two sentences.
- Consequences What becomes easier, and what becomes harder.
Bring your team and your agents
Invite people to the board or share a link, and work on it together live. The timer is in the top bar, private mode and voting in the board menu, and Claude or ChatGPT can join through Freero’s MCP server.

Work on it with an AI agent

Connect an assistant once and it works on the board with you, with your permissions: by default it reads and proposes, and people decide.

You ask: “Fill in the Architecture decision record board from these notes.”
What happens It reads the board, then proposes sticky notes for it. Nothing changes until someone on the board accepts them.
You ask: “Group what we wrote into themes and list the actions.”
What happens It proposes clusters with a title each and task cards for the actions, labelled with its name and yours.

Technical design doc
Lay out a technical design for review: context, goals and non-goals, the proposal, alternatives considered, risks and rollout.
Incident timeline
What happened when during an outage, from first alert to follow-up, with impact and lessons.
Incident postmortem
A blameless review: summary, what happened, five whys to the root cause and owned actions.
Bug bash plan
Organise an hour where everyone tries to break a feature before launch: scope, roles, test ideas, how to report and prizes.
Release readiness check
A go/no-go review before a release: what is ready, what is still open and what must be true before you ship.
Incident tabletop exercise
Walk a team through an imagined incident round by round, talking through what each person would do, to find gaps before a real one.