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Information Boundaries

Version: 1.1.0

Status: Active

Owner: Rafael da Silva Guerra

Purpose

This document defines the boundary between GitHub (official, shared documentation) and Obsidian / "Rafael OS" (personal knowledge management), and what may or may not cross that boundary.

Context

Personal knowledge management tools are excellent at capturing half-formed thoughts quickly. That is exactly why they must never be mistaken for official documentation — a note optimized for one person's fast capture is not written with the care, review or long-term audience that official documentation requires. This boundary is stated explicitly so it is never resolved ad hoc, differently, by whoever happens to be unsure that day.

The Boundary

GitHub Obsidian ("Rafael OS")
Purpose Official, shared source of truth Personal knowledge management
Audience Anyone with repository access The founder alone
Authority Binding — others can rely on it None — it is a working draft by definition
Review Follows the Documentation Standard None required
Lifespan Permanent, versioned, kept even when superseded Disposable; may be deleted, rewritten, abandoned freely

Obsidian never replaces GitHub, regardless of how complete a note in it becomes. The moment a note is stable and useful enough that someone else could reasonably act on it, it graduates: it is rewritten to meet the Documentation Standard and committed to the appropriate repository. Until that happens, it does not exist as far as W7's official record is concerned.

What Never Leaves Obsidian As-Is

  • Unfiled personal reflections, including the working material behind Founder documents before they are deliberately written up.
  • Draft reasoning that has not yet been checked against the Decision Framework.
  • Anything containing information that should not be public, per the classification below, regardless of whether the target repository is private — private today does not guarantee private later.

Sensitivity Classification

Every piece of information handled within W7 falls into one of three classes:

Class Examples Where it may live
Public Foundations, standards, published initiative content Public GitHub repositories
Internal Roadmap detail, unreleased product plans, draft ADRs Private GitHub repositories
Private Credentials, private personal reflections, unresolved disagreements, anything about a specific person without their consent Never committed to Git, in any repository, public or private

Credentials and secrets are Private by definition and are governed by the Engineering Standard's rule that they never enter version control — a private repository is not an acceptable place for a secret either, because visibility can change and history is hard to fully purge.

AI Tools and This Boundary

AI tools assisting with W7 work may receive Public information. Internal information is provided only to tools approved for the relevant repository and data-handling context, per the AI Usage Standard. Private information is not pasted into AI tool contexts, prompts, or generated documentation, regardless of convenience.