Archive Legacy Docs

Skill: Archive Legacy Docs

This skill prepares a clean, defined repository state before running generate-docs / create-plan on legacy repositories.

It collects existing documentation artifacts that are scattered/historical, moves them into a single archive directory docs-legacy/, and generates a lightweight index docs-legacy/summary.md.

The archived content is intended to be forensic reference, not canonical documentation.

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• You are onboarding a legacy repo and documentation/plan artifacts are scattered.
• You want docs/ and plans/ to start from a clean slate.

Do not use this skill when:

• docs/ and plans/ already follow this framework’s conventions and should be preserved.

Routing Matrix (Who does what)

• Writes: docs-legacy/** (including docs-legacy/summary.md).
• Moves: legacy doc files from anywhere in the repo into docs-legacy/.
• Primary: chooses/approves inclusion & exclusion policy (what counts as legacy docs).
• legacy-curator (subagent): performs git-aware moves and writes the summary.
• doc-explorer / implementer: not used.

Execution Model

Key semantics

• git-aware moves:
  • If a file is tracked by git, move it with git mv.
  • If a file is untracked, move it with filesystem move.
• flat archive:
  • All archived files end up directly under docs-legacy/ (no path-preserving).
  • Name conflicts are resolved by prefixing with the inferred module and adding a stable disambiguator.

Module inference (draft)

For each legacy document, infer a "module origin" label (best-effort):

1. If path contains a top-level module directory (e.g. backend/, frontend/, services/<name>/, packages/<name>/), use that.
2. Else use the first directory segment (<topdir>).
3. Else use root.

Workflow

0) Primary inputs

Primary should provide:

• inclusion patterns (defaults suggested below)
• exclusion patterns (defaults suggested below)
• whether to treat existing docs/ and plans/ as legacy (default: yes unless they match this framework)

1) Discover candidate legacy docs

legacy-curator:

• Collect candidate files (typical): **/*.md, **/*.rst, **/*.adoc, **/*.txt.
• Exclude common non-doc files: README*, LICENSE*, CHANGELOG*, CONTRIBUTING*, .github/**.
• Exclude build/vendor dirs: node_modules/**, dist/**, build/**, target/**, .venv/**, venv/**.
• Exclude already-archived: docs-legacy/**.

Special case:

• If docs/ or plans/ exist but do not match this framework’s structure, treat them as legacy and include their files.

2) Plan the archive mapping (in-memory)

For each candidate file, compute:

• original_path
• module_origin (draft inference)
• archive_name (flat):
  • base: <module_origin>--<original_basename>
  • if collision: append --<short-hash> or --<n>
• archive_path: docs-legacy/<archive_name>

3) Execute moves (git-aware)

• Create docs-legacy/ if missing.
• For each file:
  • If tracked: git mv <original> <archive>
  • Else: mv <original> <archive>

Do not commit.

4) Generate docs-legacy/summary.md

Create docs-legacy/summary.md using tpl-legacy-summary.md.

For each archived file, include:

• archive path
• original path
• inferred module origin
• type (doc/plan/spec/notes/adr/unknown; best-effort)
• last modified (draft): from git log -1 --format=%cs -- <file> if available, else unknown
• time bucket (draft): recent / stale / historic / unknown
• 3-sentence summary (best-effort; if non-text or unreadable → state that)

Defaults (recommended)

Include

• **/*.md
• **/*.rst
• **/*.adoc
• **/*.txt

Exclude

• docs-legacy/**
• .git/**
• .github/**
• node_modules/**, dist/**, build/**, target/**
• venv/**, .venv/**
• README*, LICENSE*, CHANGELOG*, CONTRIBUTING*

Templates

• tpl-archive-legacy-docs-prompt.md — Primary → legacy-curator delegation prompt
• tpl-legacy-summary.md — canonical format for docs-legacy/summary.md