01-projects/phdata

CAF Architecture — Founder Answers, Locked Decisions & Meta-Council Pattern Map

2026-06-15·project·status: active — v1 architecture, repo-blocked for deep schema work
phDataCAFarchitecturetenancymeta-councilworkflow-patternscoworkmcp

Working-session capture, 2026-06-15. Founder answered the open architecture questions from the [[2026-06-14-caf-restructure-organizing-brief]]; this doc records his answers, the decisions that follow, and a first-pass meta-council × workflow-pattern map (his ask #7). Builds on the verified plugin/MCP mechanics in [[2026-06-14-caf-restructure-organizing-brief]] (addendum) and the [[2026-06-04-agent-workflow-patterns-catalog]].

Founder answers (2026-06-15, verbatim gist)

  1. Data governance / tenancy. All client discovery info lives in a flat, evenly-accessible Google Drive — any phData engineer can see all clients (assigned or not), gated to phData-internal. Same flat structure should work in Snowflake. The only hard wall is external: client info must not leak across tailored demo sites.
  2. Collaborators / harness. ~12 engineers + ~60 salespeople. Majority of work in Claude Cowork.
  3. Scale. Full Fortune 2000 + many private companies. Leaning Snowflake VARIANT columns (Postgres JSONB may be equivalent).
  4. 321GO. New offering, owned by Vincent (Chief Strategy Officer); vision well locked-in.
  5. Contract shape (Contracts 0-6). Deferred — "talk through this later." → parked for a live working session.
  6. Partner site platform. Doesn't need a particular platform; assume AWS, keep it as simple as possible.
  7. Meta council. Should be per phase; wants it diagrammed with the workflow patterns (delivered below).
  8. Sandboxes. phData has Snowflake sandbox envs available.

Locked architecture decisions (follow from the answers)

A. Tenancy model — "open internal, hard-walled external" (the load-bearing call)

B. Datastore — Snowflake VARIANT + a thin typed spine

C. Harness + distribution (VERIFIED against current Anthropic docs 2026-06-15)

D. Demo / partner site — AWS, quick-sites pattern, simple

E. 321GO

Meta-council per phase × workflow patterns (answer to #7)

The meta-council is a per-phase quality gate, not a single end-of-engagement review. Expressed in the [[2026-06-04-agent-workflow-patterns-catalog]] vocabulary:

ENGAGEMENT  =  Pipeline (#7) over phases
              Phase 0 ─▶ Phase 1 ─▶ Phase 2 ─▶ … ─▶ Phase 6
                  │         │          │
                  ▼         ▼          ▼
              [META-COUNCIL GATE]  (one per phase, same shape each time)

ONE GATE (zoomed in):

   phase output
        │
        ▼
   [Classify-And-Act #1] ── route to the right VALIDATION ARCHETYPE
        │                     (domain-rule check / data-grounding / client-fit / feasibility)
        ▼
   ┌─ council member ─┐
   │  (lens: domain)  │
   │  council member  │   Adversarial Verification (#3):
   │  (lens: client-  │   each member INDEPENDENTLY tries to refute
   │   fit)           │   the phase output through its own lens
   │  council member  │
   │  (lens: data-    │
   │   grounding)     │
   └──────┬───────────┘
          ▼
     consensus?  ──no──▶  [Evaluator-Optimizer #9 loop]
          │                phase REFINES → re-submit → re-judge
          │                (until pass OR escalate)
          │
        unsure / high-stakes ──▶  HITL checker  (human gate — the
          │                        Classify-And-Act "unsure = its own
          │                        escalating branch" design)
          ▼
        pass ──▶ advance to next phase

Pattern roll-up:

This is also why these four CAF pieces were on the do-NOT-collapse list (June-9 proposal): meta-council gates, validation-archetype routing, domain-rule extraction, HITL checkers — they ARE the gate's pattern structure.

New open questions raised today

  1. Cowork↔Code skills seam (verify with Anthropic). Docs don't definitively confirm that Skills published to the Team/Enterprise org settings (Cowork rail) ALSO auto-appear in Claude Code's skill directory. If not, engineers' Code skills need separate plugin distribution. → confirm with Anthropic support before assuming one upload covers both surfaces.
  2. External demo boundary = the single isolation chokepoint. Decision A puts all tenancy risk here. Needs an explicit airtight design: per-client bundle scoping at tailoring time + per-client gated serving on AWS. Highest-risk surface in the whole system.
  3. Contract shape (Contracts 0-6) — founder #5, parked for a live working session.

Still blocked on

Cross-references