ADR-0033: Export and re-import identity

Status: Proposed

Context

A product principle says export produces the exact same folder of files. An acceptance criterion says exporting and re-importing a space yields identical files. The export downloads a zip of the space as its folder of Markdown files, including .ledger/ and assets/.

"Identical" can mean the same bytes, or the same documents after YAML is parsed and written back. A re-serialized file can change key order and line endings and still parse as the same document.

This ADR recommends one rule. The product owner has not confirmed it.

Options

1. Identical means the same parsed frontmatter and the same rendered body. Key order and line endings may change.
2. Identical means the same UTF-8 bytes, including line endings and YAML key order. Export does not re-serialize.
3. Identical means the same bytes for the body, and canonical YAML for the frontmatter.

Decision

This is a recommended resolution of an ambiguity. The product owner has not confirmed it.

Identical means the same UTF-8 bytes.

Export writes each Markdown file as the bytes stored for that document. It does not parse and rewrite frontmatter, so key order, line endings, and trailing whitespace stay as stored. .ledger/ Markdown files are included the same way. Each file in assets/ is copied as the same bytes.

Re-import stores those bytes as the initial revision content. It does not normalize them.

A test that exports a space and re-imports it must find the same bytes for every Markdown file and every asset file.

Replaces

The unspecified meaning of "exporting and re-importing a space yields identical files" in section 2.3, including line endings and key order.

Consequences

• F19: export and re-import are byte-preserving. A round trip does not reformat Markdown or assets.