ADR-0002: Universal Acquisition Engine

Date: 2026-06-14 Status: LOCKED Decision: Scout is a standalone universal acquisition engine with dual interface (HTTP API + Python library).

Context

Scout was tightly coupled to PRISM. Other tools (Claude skills, ad-hoc scripts) also needed web acquisition. Should Scout be a PRISM module or a standalone engine?

Decision

Scout is standalone. Two access modes: 1. HTTP API — FastAPI service at localhost:8421. Any language, any consumer. 2. Python library — from scout.core import ScoutCrawler. Direct import for Python consumers.

Consumers import Scout; scout.core never imports a consumer.

Consequences

• Scout has its own repo, its own test suite, its own deployment.
• PRISM calls Scout over HTTP (or imports the library). Scout doesn't know PRISM exists.
• Same engine powers CLI (scout scrape), API (POST /scrape), and library (ScoutCrawler.scrape()).