{"slug":"canonical/adr/ADR-2026-09-04-17-account-centered-spine-schema-standard","title":"ADR-2026-09-04-17: Account-Centered Spine Schema & Adaptive Growth Standard","section":"canonical","sectionLabel":"Canon","status":"canon","type":"adr","path":"canonical/adr/ADR-2026-09-04-17-account-centered-spine-schema-standard.md","bytes":2752,"description":"Architecture Decision Record establishing the universal Account anchor, departmental and domain taxonomy, inter-domain interaction contracts, and fixed base with adaptive growth.","updated":"2026-09-04","source":"integratewise/Integratewise-docs-wiki","content":"\n\n## Status\n**APPROVED / FOUNDER-CANONICAL**\n\n## Context\nAs IntegrateWise ingests data from dozens of disconnected enterprise tools across multiple functional departments (Sales, Customer Success, Support, Product/Engineering, Finance, Communications), the system required a formal architectural standard governing:\n1. How schemas are organized for the entire tenant org and across departments.\n2. How functional domains connect and interact without becoming an unmaintainable peer-to-peer web.\n3. How to balance a stable, predictable base schema with the need for continuous adaptive growth as new tools and custom fields are plugged in.\n\n## Decision\n\n1. **Establish Account as the Universal Gravitational Anchor**:\n   All operational domains link to the Account entity. Peer-to-peer inter-domain links are prohibited in the canonical core; cross-domain relationships must traverse or resolve through the Account hub.\n\n2. **Fixed Invariant Base Schema**:\n   The base Account entity and its immediate domain satellite contracts are immutable. They define core identity, cross-system external ID maps (`salesforce_id`, `zendesk_id`, `stripe_id`), canonical lifecycle states, and core KPIs.\n\n3. **Inter-Domain Interaction Contracts**:\n   Inter-domain interactions are governed by formal event and signal propagation rules centered on the Account. For example, a severe support ticket escalation updates Account health, which cascades into CS churn warnings and Revenue renewal risk adjustments.\n\n4. **Adaptive Extensions over Invariant Base**:\n   Schema evolution is achieved through typed, namespace-isolated extension bags (`extensions: Record<string, DomainExtension>`). Extensions cannot overwrite, shadow, or mutate base fields. Connectors register custom fields and domain extensions dynamically without altering base queries.\n\n5. **Tenant Isolation Invariant**:\n   All entities, relations, extensions, and KPIs are strictly partitioned by immutable `tenant_id`. Cross-tenant data references are architecturally prohibited.\n\n## Consequences\n- Guarantees stability for UI projections, AI reasoning, and analytics queries.\n- Connectors can be dynamically added or upgraded without breaking existing schemas.\n- Cross-system data is automatically correlated around the customer story.\n"}