# ADR 0131: Setup never offers to adopt existing docs — and "docs tree" retires with it

> **Placement amendment ([ADR 0195](0195-fresh-maps-and-neutral-scopes-stay-inside-owned-paths.md)):** The fresh map now lands at `discern/map/`. Setup's no-adoption rule and the separation from a project's own `docs/` remain unchanged.

**Status**: accepted; amends [ADR 0100](0100-project-map-is-the-agents-map.md)

## Context

[ADR 0100](0100-project-map-is-the-agents-map.md) separated the two artifacts that had shared the name "docs" — the project's own documentation and the tree discern maintains, the map — and reduced setup's collision machinery to one consent question: keep the map in its own folder, or point it at the project's existing docs. [ADR 0120](0120-launch-verb-canon.md) then promoted "map" to the verb and the address (`map/`), retiring the `docs` spelling from every contract position.

The question survived both decisions, and it aged badly:

- **It re-teaches the conflation the rename ended.** The first thing a new user hears about the map is an offer to point it at their human-curated documentation — the restructure-someone's-website failure mode ADR 0100 made impossible by construction, reintroduced as a suggestion at first contact.
- **It spends a consent slot on the wrong default.** The consent conversation is deliberately short (courier agents prune long messages); a question implies a live choice, and adoption is the right choice for almost nobody. A project that truly wants the map discipline over its real docs can still configure that deliberately.
- **The vocabulary survived in the walls.** "docs tree" persisted across comments, test names (29 map-browser tests still opened with the retired `docs` verb), early landing-page drafts, and the map's own installer pages.

## Decision

- **Setup reassures; it never offers.** When the project has its own `docs/` folder, the consent message states that it stays untouched and that the map is discern's separate tree at its own home — a statement, not a question. The `--map` coda after the message fence retires with it: the consent surface never mentions the flag.
- **`[map].dir` remains address configuration, not an adoption channel.** The flag and the key still accept any directory, but no shipped surface suggests pointing them at human-curated documentation.
- **The phrase "docs tree" retires from every authored surface.** The tree is _the map_; a literal directory stays describable as "the `docs/` folder". The development-vocabulary guard grows a class-level check (`tests/dev_vocab_guard_test.ts`) banning the phrase outside frozen records — historical ADRs, archived briefs, and historical install fixtures.

## Consequences

- ADR 0100's "offered as a question during setup" consequence is superseded; its map identity, namespace-default, and eager-scaffold decisions stand unchanged (an amendment note marks it there).
- The consent message now names the map's real default home (`map/`) in its footprint bullet — it previously placed the map inside the `discern/` folder, a leftover of the pre-ADR-0120 default.
- A future decision to support deliberate adoption (documentation-migration tooling, say) must clear the guard deliberately — new vocabulary and a new consent design, not a revival of the old question.

## Alternatives considered

- **Keep the question, reword it** — any phrasing that offers adoption at first contact still teaches the conflation; the offer, not the wording, was the defect.
- **Drop the `--map` flag too** — the address must stay configurable (ADR 0120 kept it so); the defect was the suggestion, not the capability.
- **Guard only the offer, not the phrase** — the behavioral tests pin the offer's absence, but the phrase is how the concept re-enters prose; both are guarded.