Dw Prune

dw-prune — the queue stops being a record of everything you once considered

A backlog grows by append, and nothing else in the loop reads it end to end — so a stale entry outlives what it described and the folder becomes a list you skim. This walks it once, deliberately.

What it reads and writes

Every .ai/backlog/*.md except README.md, the folder's own contract rather than a queued idea — the whole folder every time, so it takes no arguments. It writes deletions, a rewrite of any entry it bundles into, and the fix itself where one is cheap enough to close here. .ai/ is tracked in git. It shapes nothing: an entry that is real work stays for dw-shape.

Workflow

1. Read the folder's own bars first

.ai/backlog/README.md states them — will you ever? and should it have been done now? — with the entry shape and, where the repo caps the list, what a full one costs. Judge against those, not against taste.

2. One pass, four outcomes, every entry gets one out loud

Oldest first — the date prefix sorts them, so the folder reads in that order already:

• Stale or already done — the code moved on, another change closed it, the tool is gone. git rm it, reason in the commit message. A queue you never delete from is a record.
• Cheap and unblocked — the absorption bar, applied late. Do the work now and git rm the entry in the same commit, the fix and the deletion together. Where an open change is checked out in this tree, that commit belongs to it; otherwise it is a commit here. Never reach into a change living in another worktree — you cannot commit there, and this pass only ever commits in the tree it runs in.
• Bundled — an entry that would ship with a cousin (same version bump, same gate run, one PR) merges into it. Rewrite the survivor to cover both, git rm the other.
• Stays — real work whose moment hasn't come. Say so, write nothing. On a healthy folder most entries end here, and that is the right answer.

Never decide a batch. An entry waved through with the others survived by not being read, which is the failure this skill exists to reverse.

3. Commit, then report

Commit per ## Git conventions, staged by name, and let the one-logical-change rule cut the pass rather than forcing everything into one commit:

• The sweep is one commit — every stale deletion and bundle rewrite together, since walking the folder was the single act that produced them.
• Each fix is its own, carrying the entry it just closed. The work and the git rm that follows from it are one change; a code fix riding along in a backlog sweep is a second logical change, and ## Git conventions wants it apart.

Then report the count each way and what is left.

Next: dw-shape — what survives the prune is what it reads.