This is the clearest articulation of the problem I've seen. You've basically described exactly what I'm building. The passive ingestion angle treating reasoning as a byproduct of work already being done rather than a separate documentation task is the core insight that makes this viable where ADRs failed. I'm in early development. Would you be open to a 15 min conversation? Your framing here is sharper than anything I've heard from the 20 engineers I've already talked to.

True. It only works if the "why" is an actual, required deliverable. Maybe NASA? Can someone chime in who worked in an org like that?