Built by Engineers, For Engineers
Arbtr was born from frustration. The frustration of digging through Slack threads to understand why something was built a certain way. The frustration of explaining the same architectural decision for the tenth time. The frustration of watching good decisions get ignored because they were buried in a wiki nobody reads.
The Origin Story
Every engineering team faces the same problem: decisions get made, documented somewhere, and then forgotten. Six months later, someone asks "why do we do it this way?" and the answer is either "I don't know" or "ask the person who left last quarter."
After watching this pattern repeat across multiple companies, Adam Marsh decided to build the tool he wished existed. Not another wiki. Not another documentation platform. A system of record specifically designed for architectural decisions—with visualization, enforcement, and AI features that generic tools can't provide.
Arbtr is the result: a decision graph that shows how choices connect, strategic linting that enforces decisions in CI/CD, and AI that extracts decisions from messy Slack threads so you don't have to fill out forms.
From the Founder's Desk
Real problems that led to building Arbtr—and how it solves them.
"Before Arbtr, every architectural discussion was like starting from scratch. Now we have a living record of every decision and how they connect. It's changed how we think about technical governance."
"I used to spend half my time explaining past decisions. Now I just link to the Arbtr record. The context is preserved, the reasoning is clear, and I can focus on new problems instead of relitigating old ones."
"We used to discover strategic debt when something broke. Now we see it accumulating in real-time and can address it proactively. It's like having x-ray vision for architectural risk."
"We had architectural decisions in Notion that nobody read. Now those same decisions block PRs when violated. Compliance went from 'nice to have' to 'can't merge without it'."
"Our last three hires got productive in half the usual time. They could search for any architectural question and get a real answer with context, not just 'ask Sarah when she's free'."
"Before Arbtr, handoffs were painful. Now when an engagement ends, I export the decision graph, and the client has a complete architectural record. It's the difference between leaving a map and leaving breadcrumbs."
Common Use Cases
See how teams use Arbtr to solve specific problems.
Tracking Strategic Debt
Visualize decisions that become technical debt before they metastasize.
Learn morePreventing Architectural Drift
Lint strategy like code. Catch violations in CI/CD before they reach production.
Learn moreEngineering Onboarding
Get new engineers productive faster with searchable architectural context.
Learn moreYour Story Here
We're actively onboarding early adopters. If you're an engineering leader who struggles with decision documentation, architectural drift, or knowledge transfer—we'd love to hear from you.