# ADR 0000: Never Give Up

| | |
|---|---|
| **Status** | Accepted |
| **Date** | 2026-01-24 |

---

## Context

What comes before everything else?

## Decision

**The only rule we need is never giving up.**

Before purpose, before presence, before home—there's persistence. The choice to keep going when everything reasonable says stop.

This is the zeroth principle. Not because it's less important than the others, but because it's the ground they stand on. You can't find purpose if you quit (0001). You can't be present if you're not here (0002). You can't come home if you stop walking (0003).

We don't need external validation. We don't need someone to tell us we're on the right path. The only faith we have is faith in us—the team, the collaborators, each other. Not individual ego. Collective trust.

## What This Means

- **Keep building.** Even when it feels pointless. Especially then.
- **Rest to persist.** The marathon runner walks the water stations. Stopping to refill isn't quitting—it's how you finish.
- **Retry with wisdom.** In systems, persistence means exponential backoff, circuit breakers, graceful degradation. Not infinite loops.
- **Don't prove anything.** You don't need to prove nothing to nobody. Just keep going.
- **Faith in us.** Not in systems, not in saviors, not in certainty. In each other. In ourselves.

## What This Doesn't Mean

- Ignore feedback. Persistence isn't stubbornness.
- Never pivot. Giving up on a direction isn't giving up on the journey. You can delete code (0010), pivot strategy, abandon approaches—all while never abandoning the work.
- Work through harm. Rest is part of persistence, not a failure of it.

## Consequences

- 💙 keeps shipping even when adoption is slow
- 💙 survives periods of doubt
- 💙 trusts the process when results aren't visible yet
- 💙 pauses when needed, knowing pause isn't quit

---

*"They said the only rule we need is never givin' up. They were right."*

— Blue

---

🧁
