Retroactive English filenames for translated documents (amends ADR-070)

DateDate: 2026-07-18
DécideursDecision makers: Guilherme Negreiros — Design System Lead

Context

ADR-070 fully translated How-to-sans-agents.md, docs/agentica-notre-demarche.md, Brand/Agentica-synthèse.md, and the 8 scripts/continuity/*.sh fallback scripts from French to English, but explicitly kept every file name unchanged — a deliberate choice, reasoned in ADR-070 as avoiding broken cross-references throughout the repository.

During a follow-up English-only validation pass (2026-07-18), the Design System Lead flagged this as an inconsistency: an external, non-French-speaking contributor browsing the repository tree sees French words in filenames (sans-agents, notre-demarche, synthèse, outils-existants, installation-produit, etc.) even though the file contents are already fully English — undermining the international legibility goal ADR-070 and ADR-071 were written to serve, at the exact surface (GitHub's file tree) ADR-070's own rationale for translating root docs first was built on ("an external contributor reads the repo tree before reaching the site").

Decision

The 11 files below are renamed to English, and every cross-reference to them across the repository (root docs, ADRs, scripts, site/build.js) is updated to match. This amends ADR-070's "file paths are not renamed" clause for these specific files — it does not reopen translation of file names in general (see Rejected alternatives).

Old name	New name
`How-to-sans-agents.md`	`How-to-without-agents.md`
`docs/agentica-notre-demarche.md`	`docs/agentica-our-approach.md`
`Brand/Agentica-synthèse.md`	`Brand/Agentica-synthesis.md`
`scripts/continuity/1-1-outils-existants.sh`	`scripts/continuity/1-1-existing-tools.sh`
`scripts/continuity/1-2-quality-gate-manuel.sh`	`scripts/continuity/1-2-manual-quality-gate.sh`
`scripts/continuity/1-3-figma-checklist.sh`	(unchanged — already English)
`scripts/continuity/1-4-adr-log-rappel.sh`	`scripts/continuity/1-4-adr-log-reminder.sh`
`scripts/continuity/2-1-installation-produit.sh`	`scripts/continuity/2-1-product-installation.sh`
`scripts/continuity/2-2-checklist-produit.sh`	`scripts/continuity/2-2-product-checklist.sh`
`scripts/continuity/2-3-anti-contournement.sh`	`scripts/continuity/2-3-anti-bypass.sh`
`scripts/continuity/2-4-contact-escalade.sh`	`scripts/continuity/2-4-escalation-contact.sh`

Renamed via git mv (preserves history/blame). The scripts/continuity/*.sh file *contents* (comments, echo/prompt strings) were also translated to English in the same pass — they were the one area ADR-070's 6 chantiers never covered, since scripts/ was not one of the six listed scopes.

ADR-001 through ADR-074's own filenames (ADR-0NN-slug-in-french.md) are not in scope here — see Rejected alternatives.

Rejected alternatives

Alternative	Reason for rejection
Also rename `decisions/ADR-*.md` filenames to English slugs	Far larger blast radius (70+ files, every ADR cross-references others by filename, external links/citations may point at existing paths); ADR-071 already made the historical-log content bilingual without touching filenames — renaming 74 historical filenames is a separate, much costlier decision the Lead did not ask for in this pass.
Leave all 11 filenames as-is, per ADR-070's original reasoning	Was the status quo; superseded because it left French words visible on the one surface (GitHub's repository tree) that ADR-070 itself identified as a new contributor's first impression.
Redirect/symlink old paths instead of updating every reference	Adds a permanent maintenance shim for a one-time, fully-traceable rename that `git mv` + grep-and-replace already handles cleanly; no external consumer is known to link these paths directly (unlike npm package names in ADR-072/073).

Consequences

For AI agents:

Reference How-to-without-agents.md, docs/agentica-our-approach.md,

Brand/Agentica-synthesis.md, and the renamed scripts/continuity/*.sh paths going forward — the old French paths no longer exist on disk.

site/build.js's continuity page (script links, HOWTO constant) and AGENTS.md /

How-to-designers.md / How-to-devs.md / DESIGN.md relations lines were updated in the same pass — no dangling reference should remain (verified by repository-wide grep for the old names).

This does not change ADR-070's "no filename renames" default for future translation

work in general — it is a one-time correction for files whose content was already fully translated but whose names were missed.

For humans:

git log --follow on any of the 11 files still surfaces the pre-rename history.
The public site is unaffected in substance: site/build.js already links to these

paths via generated <a href> tags, which were updated to the new filenames as part of this change; no URL structure on agentica.design itself changes.

Incidents or triggers

Explicit user request from Guilherme Negreiros, 2026-07-18, during a follow-up English validation pass following ADR-070/071: flagged French filenames (e.g. How-to-sans-agents.md) as a residual inconsistency and asked for a "round of validation that everything is in English" excluding the site's intentional French version. Given three options (rename everything and fix references, leave filenames as-is per ADR-070, or rename only the files with zero cross-references), the Lead chose the full rename.

← ADR-074