Somebody is leaving
The most common trigger, and the one with a deadline attached. What matters here is what you establish while the person is still reachable — the window is short and it does not reopen.
- Situation A developer has left What is actually lost when the person who built your software leaves, what to check in the first week, what to ask for if they are still reachable, and how to rebuild a technical picture without them. My developer left and there is no documentation. What do I do?
- Situation A software handover A handover is complete when a team that has never seen the system can run it, change it and answer questions about it. What that requires, in what order, and how to check it rather than hope. How do I hand a software project over to a new team?
- Situation Changing agency What to establish before you give notice, what an outgoing agency owes you, what an incoming one needs, and how to avoid the gap where neither is responsible. How do I change development agency safely?
Nobody here can answer the question
No deadline, no crisis — just a system the company owns and cannot describe. This is the situation that has been true for years and gets discovered during the first one above.
- Situation A legacy system Legacy usually means "the people left", not "the technology is old". How to get an owner's picture of an inherited system, in what order, and what to stop doing while you do it. How do we regain control of software nobody here understands?
- Situation AI-built software When software is written faster than anyone reads it, the understanding was never created in the first place. What that changes for an owner, and how to establish what exists — without treating AI as the problem. How do I understand software that was written by a coding agent?
- Situation A non-technical owner You do not need to read code. You do need to be able to obtain specific answers about your own system without depending on one person's goodwill. Which answers, and how to get them. How can a non-technical founder understand their own software?
Somebody is arriving
The mirror image: a person or a company taking responsibility for a system they have never seen, from people who are already busy.
- Situation A new technical leader A new technical leader spends their first months reconstructing what already exists, from people who are already busy. What to establish first, what to ask for, and what not to change yet. I am taking over an existing system. What do I need in the first month?
- Situation Vendor dependency Dependency is not a feeling. It is a set of specific facts about who holds what — and each of them can be checked. What to measure, and what to do about each answer. How dependent are we on our software supplier, really?
And when this is not for you
If you are technical, you want one answer about one codebase today, and you will not need it again — a coding agent on its own is enough. It will do a better job faster, and 1ADK would be an extra step for no gain. 1ADK is for the case where the answer has to outlast the person who asked it and be checkable by somebody who did not.
The solution selector is deliberately willing to reach that conclusion, and several others that are not this product.