CoDL and CaDL: Architecture Description Languages for Governance and LLM
Wednesday, 3:15 PM EST
Most architecture documentation lives in slide decks and wikis — formats that humans struggle to act on and LLMs can't reason over reliably. This talk introduces CoDL (Constraints Description Language) and CaDL (Capabilities Description Language) as lightweight, structured notations for expressing architecture in a form that both governance processes and AI tooling can consume. Drawing on the BTABoK's Architecture Description competency — which emphasises producing structured, stakeholder-relevant, and traceable representations of systems — the session shows how formalising architectural intent into machine-readable schemas unlocks new possibilities: automated compliance checks, LLM-driven design critiques, and governance workflows that run without manual chasing.
Attendees leave with a working mental model of what these languages look like, where they slot into everyday architecture work, and why getting the notation right is the prerequisite for everything else in the AI-assisted architecture stack.
About Paul Preiss
Paul Preiss is the CEO and Founder of the Iasa, one of the largest Enterprise and IT architect associations in the world. Through his time at Iasa, Paul has taken the association from a single user group in Austin Tx to an international organization with chapters in over 25 countries. Paul's vision is a unified architecture profession with effective education, credentials and ethics which fully supports corporate strategy and delivery. He is a tireless advocate for the field and speaks on topics ranging form architecture ethics to best the best setup and structure for architecture teams. Paul has spoken at hundreds of events as well as held conferences and training for architects all over the world. He is an expert software and enterprise architect in practice and continues to work with companies on optimizing their technology strategy.
Prior to developing Iasa, Paul was the chief architect for Dell Pan Asia where he helped to integrate the technology strategy across 14 countries. He also served as the chief architect for the Sears point of sale replacement in North America consisting of 2000 stores and thousands of suppliers as well as the chief architect for a digital asset management firm, Ancept.
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