The Dox9+ Framework is a lean system for writing and maintaining solution design documentation. It combines a lightweight notation for expressing design information, a structured template for solution design documents, and an agentic process that support writing and validating them.
The project is composed of three parts:
- Dox, the foundational notation used to express requirements, decisions and other types of assertions, inspired by the Six Thinking Hats method
- Dox9+ (Dox-nine-plus), a Solution Design template built on Dox and inspired by arc42, which includes conventions to guide document writing and evaluate the soundness of a specification over time.
- DoxOps agents, a set of agent skills for compiling the Dox9+ template following a well-established documentation process.
Dox, Dox9+ and DoxOps are distributed under CC BY-SA 4.0 — see LICENSE.md.
To start using the framework with the help of agent skills, please follow the instructions available in the DoxOps page. You can also use the framework manually, following the conventions described in the Dox specification and the Dox9+ template.
Dox is a documentation notation that establishes meaningful conventions for writing specifications, enabling leaner solution design for both humans and machines. It follows a convention-over-prescription principle: rather than imposing formal rules, it encourages best practices and applies Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats method to surface implicit perspectives and bias in design documentation.
The latest version is Dox v1.8.1.
Dox9+ is a Solution Design template inspired by arc42, built on Dox notation. Unlike arc42, it is organized around a chronological flow that mirrors the design process: from business context, to functional definition, to technical strategy, to implementation specification. Reading the document from beginning to end should tell a coherent story of how a problem was understood and how a solution was shaped to address it.
The framework defines a maturity model — available in two variants, Top-Down and Bottom-Up — to calibrate documentation effort to the actual needs of a project, and to support incremental, agile solutioning.
The latest version is Dox9+ v1.0.4.
DoxOps is the agentic process built around Dox9+: a set of skills that turn the template into a working framework for writing, maintaining, and validating Solution Design documentation, in support of developers and architects working in enterprise and non-enterprise contexts alike.
See DoxOps for a description of available agents and related process.