English as the repository's default language (community translation)

Context

The Agentica repository was written entirely in French — root documentation (README, AGENTS.md, DESIGN.md, How-to guides), guidelines, .claude/ rules, architectural decisions (decisions/). The stated goal is to share the project with the international design systems community (Storybook, Figma Community, publications like Design Systems Collective) — an overwhelmingly English-speaking readership.

The public site (site/) already has a working bilingual FR/EN system (lang-fr/lang-en spans, toggled via .lang-btn) from an earlier effort (2026-05-29). This system only covers the generated site, not the repository's own markdown files — which are what an external contributor reads first on GitHub.

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Decision

English becomes the repository's default language. Migration is split into 6 initiatives in GitHub Projects (Domain Governance/Site/Components, all linked to the parent ticket "Full translation of the repository to English"):

This initiative 1 (root documentation) is the first delivered by this decision — a full replacement of French with English, with no French version kept in parallel (an explicit decision: avoid the double-maintenance debt of two complete copies).

File paths (.claude/rules/contexts-utilisation.md, etc.) are not renamed during this translation — only the content changes, not the file names, so as not to break cross-references throughout the repository.

Note (ADR-071, 2026-07-13): initiative 5's lightweight strategy (an EN summary up top, French body preserved) was implemented first, then superseded by a full retroactive translation of all 70 ADRs — see ADR-071, which establishes English as the sole language for all future content while extending full bilingual treatment to every already-existing ADR.

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Rejected alternatives

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Consequences

For AI agents:

• AGENTS.md, DESIGN.md, and the How-to-*.md guides are now in English — any future

modification to these files is done in English, unless explicitly decided otherwise.

• .claude/rules/*.md files remain in French until initiative #4 — an agent will

therefore read a mix of EN (router, contract) / FR (detailed rules) during the transition. No functional ambiguity: file names and paths don't change.

• The user's global conversation preferences (responding in French in conversation) are

independent of the language of the content versioned in the repository — no contradiction.

For humans:

• The repository becomes readable by an external, non-French-speaking contributor as

soon as they open the README.

• Loss of the French version of these 6 files in the repository (recoverable via git

history if needed — no separate archive created, unlike the Redesign/ folder, which contained non-recreatable binary assets).

Accepted cost:

• During the transition period (initiatives #3 through #6 not yet completed), the

repository is bilingual de facto by zone rather than by file — accepted as an intermediate state, not an end state.

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Incidents or triggers

Explicit user request on 2026-07-09 as part of building a governance backlog (alongside repository cleanup and Figma governance): "Full translation of the repository to English. English needs to become the default language so I can share the project with the international community."