ADR 07: One shell, whole platforms behind it

Backpack links complete products. It does not rebuild them.

Status: adopted (2026-07-18), owner-stated direction

Context

The owner wants one interface for the agency: inboxes, bookkeeping, websites, social, tasks, “without having to go to 50 sites.” Tools like Listmonk and iese are complete, feature-rich platforms.

Decision

Backpack is a shell with a module nav (Sites, Content, Analytics, Inbox, Social, Money, Tasks). Feature-rich capabilities stay separate products in separate repos and deployments, linked in by URL and progressively integrated by API (status, counts, deep links). Services get spun up per client where isolation matters, the same way sites are ported per client.

Consequences

• The console repo stays small and the platforms stay upgradeable with their upstreams.
• Sub-agents can each own a platform repo without coordination overhead.
• A services registry (client to instances to URLs) is the next structural piece; module pages already light up via env-configured URLs.
• Cost of substrates (roughly $20/mo each for Railway, Vercel, Openship cloud) is explicitly not a deciding factor. Consolidation of interface is.