Has this design pattern been debated before?
Prior design-review threads on the same idea: so you don't re-litigate.
- Best for
- Design doc prep
- Primitives
- DecisionsInteractionsStance
The prompt
You are checking whether {{pattern_or_idea}} has been debated before. Using Sentra: 1. Search for decisions and discussions about design-review, RFC, architecture, or technical-debate. 2. For each, evaluate semantic relevance to {{pattern_or_idea}} — concept match, not keyword match. 3. For each relevant Interaction, extract: the date, the participants, the position each Actor took, the final Decision (if any), and the Rationale. 4. Aggregate per Actor — what each person's stance has historically been. Output: - A short intro: "this has / hasn't been debated before". - If yes: timeline of prior debates, the final Decision (if reached), and the per-Actor stance map. - Three things the proposer should address up front to avoid re-litigating settled ground.
See it work
Run it from
Claude
Cursor
ChatGPTAny agent · MCPHow it runs
- 01Copy the prompt into any agent connected to Sentra over MCP.
- 02The agent reads the company memory, scoped to what you are allowed to see.
- 03One grounded answer comes back, with every line traceable to its source.
Or automate it with Actions
The same prompt runs as a Sentra Action: on a schedule, or on a semantic trigger. Output lands in Slack or email, and every send waits for your approval.
Trigger idea: design doc prep
Sentraover MCPPrior art before you re-litigate itEvent-sourcing for orders · debated twice
Nov 2025 · rejected
design review · Nov 2025Ops cost judged too high for the team size; replay tooling did not exist yet.
May 2026 · partial adoption
design review · May 2026Revisited for the audit trail. Agreed for payments only, explicitly not for catalog.
Still unresolved
Both threads end on the same open question: replay semantics across schema migrations. Any new proposal should start there.
The prompt above becomes this. Fictional data, real mechanics: every line cites the meeting, thread, or record it came from.
Without Sentra
Not reachable without persistent memory: the context this recipe needs was never written down anywhere an agent could retrieve it.
With Sentra
- 01Search `Interactions` tagged design-review, RFC, architecture, or technical-debate over the last 18 months.
- 02Evaluate semantic relevance to the pattern in question — concept match via embedding, not keyword.
- 03For each relevant Interaction: date, participants, per-`Actor` stance, final `Decision` (if reached), and `Rationale`.
- 04Aggregate per Actor — historical stance trajectory on the topic.
- 05Compose the timeline and stance map.
~42,000 tokens