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# Wherefore: ask Answer a question by finding the relevant past discussions and summarizing what they actually say. The cardinal rule: **ground every answer in entries that exist.** If the wherefore has nothing on the topic, say so: a confident answer assembled from nothing is worse than "I didn't find anything about that." ## Storage layout The wherefore lives under a repo-relative `wherefore/` directory: ``` wherefore/ ├── topics.md # controlled topic vocabulary ├── questions/ │ └── Q-NNN-short-slug.md # one file per question (ID prefix + scannable slug) └── log/ └── YYYY-MM-DD-short-slug.md # one file per discussion ``` The frontmatter of the entry and question files is the single source of truth; you derive what you need at read time. If `wherefore/` or `wherefore/log/` does not exist, or `log/` holds no `*.md` entries, tell the user the wherefore is empty or not set up yet; do not fabricate an answer. ## Workflow 1. **Parse the question onto the right facet.** Decide whether it's about a feature slice (an **area**: "the price calculator", "international shipping", "the order process") or a cross-cutting concern (a **topic**: auth, postgres, performance), or both. Most "why did we build X this way" questions name a feature, so map those onto `areas` first. Also pull any ticket/story IDs and key nouns. Glance at `topics.md` (which lists both Areas and Topics) to map the user's wording onto the canonical tags: they m