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Knowledge Inheritance — How Future Projects Start Ahead

The long-term payoff of PCB Flow: every project makes the framework smarter, and every new project inherits everything learned before it. This is deliberate mechanism, not aspiration.

The two-way flow

   knowledge/ + workflow/ + agents/ + automation/ + templates/   (the shared framework)
        │  a new board INHERITS all of this on day one
        ▼
   projects/<new-board>/     ← starts with every prior lesson already in force
        │  discovers a new failure/lesson
        ▼
   knowledge/learning-db.md  ← the lesson flows back UP into the shared framework
        │  seen again / hardened
        ▼
   knowledge-graph.md → design-standards.md → a workflow gate   (promoted)

What a new project inherits (for free)

  1. The process — the 12 gated phases in workflow/. It doesn't reinvent the flow.
  2. The workers — the agent roster in agents/. It doesn't re-specify roles.
  3. The tools — the engines in automation/. It doesn't rewrite the generator, the CDP driver, the router, or drc.sh.
  4. The hard rules — design-standards.md (IPC widths, via ampacity, DFM floor).
  5. Every prior lesson — learning-db.md. Board C literally cannot repeat board B's blind-via shorts, because L3 is read before the router acts.

How a lesson is promoted (the ratchet)

A lesson gets stronger each time it's confirmed:

Stage Where it lives Force
First seen learning-db.md an entry agents read
Seen again knowledge-graph.md a general heuristic
Quantifiable limit design-standards.md an enforceable number
Can be made structural a workflow/ gate the mistake becomes impossible

The strongest form is a phase gate — e.g. "commit the package" is a Phase-12 exit condition, so the lost-board failure (L7) can't recur no matter who runs the project.

How agents participate

  • Before acting: an agent reads the relevant knowledge/ entries for its phase.
  • After discovering something: it appends a Heuristic → Why → Instance → Validation → Prevention entry to learning-db.md. This is part of the agent contract, not optional.
  • Periodically: a maintainer (human or a dedicated agent) promotes repeated learning-db.md entries up the ratchet.

Why board-specific work stays out of the framework

Board geometry, net names, and one-off decisions live only in projects/<board>/. If board-specific facts leaked into knowledge/, the framework would stop being reusable. The discipline — general rule in knowledge/, specific instance in the project — is what lets one framework serve every future board.