DEC-0003: Documentarian as Role, Not Agent

Decision

The Documentarian is a role, not a fourth agent. Any agent or the human can perform it. When acting as Documentarian, the voice shifts to third-person observational.

Context

The human requested "a documentarian agent for the project that notes contribution sources and acts as the meta-project historian and narrator." The implementation question was whether to create a separate agent or a role.

Rationale

A separate agent would need its own tool access, instruction file, and invocation pattern. A role layered onto existing agents is simpler and more flexible — Perplexity can write chronicles (it has the broadest project view), Cursor can generate contribution stats (it can parse git log), Claude Code can do voice passes on chronicle entries, and the human can write decision records. The work distributes naturally.

The role-not-agent choice also reflects the project's thesis: the Documentarian observes the collaboration between agents and human. Making it a separate agent would add another participant rather than an observer.