history-hygiene

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name: history-hygiene description: Record reconciled final outcomes to history.md, not intermediate requests or obsolete claims domain: documentation, team-collaboration confidence: high source: earned (stale history reversal incident, team intervention)

Context

History files are cold-start context, not the source of truth for live behavior. Stale or incorrect entries poison decision-making downstream. A stale-history incident proved that an old history claim can cause future spawns to repeat a reversed decision. Reconcile an operational claim with current implementation, workflows, tests, documentation, skills, and applicable decisions before acting on it.

Scope

• Activate when recording, correcting, or promoting finalized operational history.
• Allowed targets: the explicitly selected history file and a focused reusable skill when the rule applies beyond one role.
• Exclusions: intermediate requests, stale assignments, roster metadata, and unrelated cleanup.

Patterns

• Record the final outcome, not the initial request.
• Wait for confirmation before writing to history — don't log intermediate states.
• If a decision reverses, update the entry immediately — don't leave stale data.
• Link authority for operational facts. Name the current source or workflow when a lesson depends on live behavior.
• Promote reusable rules. Move procedures and incident lessons that future roles need into a focused skill; history should retain only the evidence and outcome.
• Record shipped guidance changes. A change to a shipped skill or template requires a changeset/changelog entry, unless the repository's documented skip label or equivalent release exception is present.

Examples

✓ Correct:

• "Migration target: v0.8.17 (initial target was later corrected before execution)"
• "Node runtime: follow the current package.json engines.node requirement"

✗ Incorrect:

• "Migration target: v0.6.0" (when that request was later reversed)
• Recording what was requested instead of what actually happened
• Logging entries before outcome is confirmed

Stop conditions

• Stop if the outcome is not confirmed or current authority disagrees with the proposed entry.
• Stop if the target history file or promoted skill is outside the explicit scope.
• Stop if a shipped skill/template change has no changeset or documented release exception.

Anti-Patterns

• Writing intermediate or "for now" states to disk
• Attributing decisions without confirming final direction
• Treating history as authoritative over live source or workflow behavior
• Copying dated assignments, status reports, or retired workarounds into a reusable skill