Accelint Qrspi Archive

Accelint QRSPI Archive

Archive an OpenSpec change and follow it with the cross-capability linking and index bookkeeping OpenSpec doesn't do on its own. This skill invokes openspec-archive-change or openspec-bulk-archive-change itself — it's the entry point for archiving a change, not a step that reacts after someone has already archived one — waits for the merge to fully resolve, and then links every pair of capabilities the change touched via a shared related: frontmatter list, keeps a single running index of all specs up to date, and appends to an append-only changelog of every archived change.

Cross-linking has to happen after the merge resolves, not before it, which is exactly why this skill runs the native command itself as its own first phase rather than treating "a merge happened" as some external event to watch for. A delta spec in openspec/changes/<slug>/specs/ is still provisional — openspec-bulk-archive-change may resolve conflicts across several changes in chronological order before a capability's spec reaches its final shape. Only the merged, archived spec is worth indexing; anything computed earlier would be linking against content that might still change underneath it.

What This Skill Does

Automates: the full archive operation for one or more OpenSpec changes in a single invocation — invoking openspec-archive-change or openspec-bulk-archive-change itself, then immediately following up with cross-capability linking and index maintenance. Scope: everything from "archive this change" through updated indices. This skill calls the native command itself during archive and extraction; it does not wait for the merge to have happened some other way first. Output: the change(s) archived via OpenSpec's own merge, plus updated related: frontmatter and a regenerated ## Related Specs section on every touched spec, an updated openspec/specs/INDEX.md (patched for the capabilities this batch touched, or built fresh project-wide the first time the file doesn't exist yet), and one appended row per archived change in openspec/changes/archive/INDEX.md. Does NOT: implement the merge or conflict-resolution logic itself (that's OpenSpec's own, which this skill invokes via the native command rather than reimplementing), prune any related: entry, change a change's Status column after its initial write, reorder existing changelog rows, or shell out to the OpenSpec CLI to read local spec files (plain file reads are sufficient — see Explicitly Out of Scope).

Prerequisites

• OpenSpec CLI installed and initialized, with one or more changes ready to archive.
• Sub-agent support, for per-capability spec writes only — those always run as subagents, unconditionally, and this is a hard requirement for normal operation there, not an optional speedup for large batches (see Error Handling for the degraded fallback if unavailable). Archive and extraction never uses a subagent, regardless of whether sub-agent support exists — see the Archive and Extract section for why.
• Each change's openspec/changes/<slug>/design.md has YAML frontmatter including specs_touched (a non-empty list of capability names) and decisions (a list of {id, choice, rationale, alternatives} entries).
• Every capability named in any specs_touched list already has openspec/specs/<capability>/spec.md with a ## Purpose or ### Purpose heading in its body — this skill reads that heading rather than duplicating purpose text into frontmatter, and rewriting the correct behavior depends on that heading actually being there (verified in preflight checks, Task B).

If any of these are missing, report the gap and guide the user to resolve it before proceeding — do not silently substitute a guessed default for a missing field. This applies as-is to spec writing's sub-agent support and a touched spec's missing ## Purpose or ### Purpose heading. A change's missing specs_touched/decisions frontmatter is handled differently: preflight Task A derives a candidate from the change's own files and gets the author's explicit confirmation before writing it, rather than stopping outright — see Task A below for why a hard stop isn't actually necessary here, and why it still isn't a silent guess.

Workflow Overview

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Stage              Action                              Output         │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  0 Preflight        Verify frontmatter + Purpose         Go / no-go    │
│                     headings before touching anything                  │
│  1 Archive+Extract  Run openspec-archive-change or          Change     │
│                     openspec-bulk-archive-change yourself,  records    │
│                     in this context (never a subagent);                │
│                     stay with any internal sync branch                 │
│                     until archive's own steps finish,                  │
│                     then read back specs_touched + decisions           │
│  2 Validate         Confirm archive records are             Checked    │
│                     structurally complete                  records     │
│  3 Link             Combine new co-touch pairs across         New      │
│                     this batch's changes (no file I/O)     partners    │
│  4 Write specs      SUBAGENT (one per capability,          Updated     │
│                     always, never inline): merges new       specs      │
│                     partners with existing related:,                   │
│                     sorts, writes frontmatter + body                   │
│  5 Specs index      Patch specs/INDEX.md for the           INDEX.md    │
│                     capabilities this batch touched                    │
│                     (full rebuild only if the index is                 │
│                     missing)                                           │
│  6 Change log       Append one row per archived change     INDEX.md    │
│                     to changes/archive/INDEX.md (append-only)          │
│  7 Report           Summarize what changed                 Summary     │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Critical: for openspec-bulk-archive-change, validation through reporting run exactly ONCE, after every
merge in the batch has resolved — never once per intermediate merge. Running
early would compute pairs against a specs_touched set that hasn't finished
accumulating cross-change conflicts, and would patch INDEX.md against a
half-finished batch.

Spec writing always delegates to subagents, regardless of batch size — one
capability or forty. This isn't a parallelization optimization that only
kicks in for large batches; it's how this skill keeps raw spec.md contents
out of the parent's context on every run, the same pattern
accelint-qrspi-propose and accelint-qrspi-apply use.

Archive and extraction is the mirror image: it never delegates to a subagent, regardless of
batch size or whether sub-agent support is even available. openspec-archive-change and
openspec-bulk-archive-change are themselves agent-driven, multi-step skills — not a
single deterministic CLI call — and a subagent handed instructions to run openspec-archive-change
has no reliable way to resume that skill's own remaining steps once it
branches internally into something like a separate sync skill, and no way
to surface an interactive prompt back to the user if one comes up. Both of
those are failure modes this skill hit in practice, not hypothetical ones —
see the Archive and Extract section for the full account.

Implementation Steps

Execute these steps in order without stopping between them unless an error occurs:

Preflight Checks

Goal: confirm the archive operation's inputs are shaped correctly before touching any spec or index file. Task A is a narrow exception: once the author confirms a derived specs_touched/decisions candidate, it writes that back into design.md — that's filling in an input step 7 expects to already be there.

1. Determine scope: a single-change archive (openspec-archive-change with a change name) or a bulk archive (openspec-bulk-archive-change) spanning several pending changes.

2. Verification Task A — design.md frontmatter. For every change about to be archived, read openspec/changes/<slug>/design.md and confirm its frontmatter contains a non-empty specs_touched list and a decisions list where each entry has at least id and choice:

   ---
   change: add-live-sync
   specs_touched: [sync/protocol, ui/status-indicator]
   decisions:
     - id: D1
       choice: polling with 5s interval
       rationale: no infra budget for a message broker this quarter
       alternatives: [websocket push, long polling]
   ---
   

   If frontmatter is present and well-formed, proceed as-is — this is the expected case for any change that went through accelint-qrspi-propose, which is where specs_touched/decisions are supposed to get written at design time in the first place. If changes are consistently arriving here without this frontmatter, that's a signal to go fix accelint-qrspi-propose (or accelint-qrspi-apply) so it writes this block as part of its own normal workflow — that closes the gap at the source instead of leaning on the recovery path below run after run.

   If frontmatter is missing or malformed for a change, this skill still does not silently substitute a guessed value — the change's author has to make that call explicitly, not this skill. But a hard stop with no path forward isn't the only way to get that explicit confirmation, and most of the time the missing field is recoverable from material the change's own author already wrote:

   • Derive a candidate. For specs_touched, look at the change's proposal.md capability declarations and the delta spec directories under openspec/changes/<slug>/specs/. For decisions, look at any Decisions section in proposal.md or decision prose already present in design.md.
   • Present it for confirmation — don't write it yet. Show the derived candidate to the user and ask them to (a) confirm it as written, (b) edit it first, or (c) pause so they can fix design.md themselves and re-invoke this skill later. Only once the user picks (a) or (b) does the candidate become the value this skill writes into design.md's frontmatter — at that point it's the same explicit author confirmation the well-formed case gets for free, just captured one step later than at propose time.
   • Stop outright, with no candidate offered, only when there's nothing in the change's own files to derive from — e.g. an empty delta specs directory and no capability declarations anywhere in proposal.md. In that case, report exactly which change and which field is missing, the same as before.

   This is evaluated per change in a bulk-archive batch — one change needing confirmation doesn't block preflight for the others.

3. Verification Task B — Purpose heading convention. For every capability named across all specs_touched lists in this batch, check whether openspec/specs/<capability>/spec.md contains a heading that describes its purpose:

   Acceptable headings (check in this order, first match wins):

   • ## Purpose or ### Purpose
   • ## Overview or ### Overview

   Treat Overview and Purpose as semantically equivalent — both describe what the capability does and why it exists, which is what index updates and spec writing need.

   If none of these headings exist: Ask the user how to handle it:

   • (a) Add a placeholder ## Purpose heading with text _Purpose not yet documented_ for now
   • (b) Pause so they can add the heading themselves first
   • (c) Read the spec content and generate a ## Purpose heading based on what the spec describes

   Option (c) is usually best when the spec has meaningful content — the agent can synthesize a purpose statement from what's already documented. Option (b) is better for specs that are stubs or need domain expertise to describe accurately. Option (a) is a last resort when you need to unblock immediately but will need to come back and fix it later.

   Note: This check applies only to capabilities that already have MAIN specs at openspec/specs/<capability>/spec.md. Brand-new capabilities (per step 4) don't have MAIN specs yet, so skip this check for them — they'll get their Purpose heading when their spec is created during archive.

4. For any capability in specs_touched that has no openspec/specs/<capability>/ directory yet — a brand-new capability introduced by this change — note it separately. Step 19 will need to create its spec.md frontmatter from scratch rather than editing an existing file, and step 20's Purpose column will need the user to supply a value manually since nothing exists yet to read.

5. Report the preflight summary before proceeding: changes in scope, capabilities touched, and any Task A or Task B outcomes. If Task A ends in a stop for any change — the user chose to pause and fix design.md themselves, or no candidate could be derived at all — do not proceed to step 6 for that change. A Task A candidate the user confirmed counts as passing, the same as frontmatter that was already well-formed. If Task B fails for some capability, that's fine to resolve later — steps 6-17 don't touch spec bodies, so only flag it as blocking once step 18 is about to reach that capability.

Archive and Extract (runs inline — never a subagent)

6. Let OpenSpec do the actual merge, then read back the data steps 17 and 23 need — done directly in this context, not handed to a subagent.

This step never runs as a subagent, regardless of batch size and regardless of whether sub-agent support is available at all. That's a reversal of this skill's 1.0.0 behavior, made after running into two concrete failure modes in practice:

• openspec-archive-change and openspec-bulk-archive-change are agent-driven skills, not a single deterministic CLI call. They read project state, decide what needs syncing, and — when a sync is needed — hand off internally to a separate sync skill before returning to finish the rest of the archive workflow (merging delta specs, moving the change into openspec/changes/archive/). A subagent given instructions to run openspec-archive-change has no reliable way to tell "I finished the sync skill this archive step referred me to" apart from "I finished the thing I was actually asked to do" — there's no caller to check back with mid-task. In practice this showed up exactly that way: the subagent ran the sync step, considered its job done, and returned control without ever reaching the merge. Running archive directly in this context means the same agent that issued the instruction is the one watching it branch into sync, so it can recognize the branch for what it is and carry on to archive's remaining steps once sync finishes — the same continuity a person would have running the command themselves.
• A subagent can't surface an interactive prompt to the user. openspec-archive-change and openspec-bulk-archive-change may raise more than the routine sync y/n — openspec-bulk-archive-change in particular can prompt for confirmation before merging changes that touch overlapping specs (see step 2 below). A subagent that hits a prompt like that is stuck: it can't hand the question to the user and get a real answer, and guessing on the user's behalf is worse than not proceeding. Running archive inline means any such prompt lands in the same conversation the user is already in.

This does give something up: openspec-archive-change's own internal work — comparing delta specs against main specs, resolving bulk-archive's cross-change ordering — now happens directly in this context instead of being absorbed by an isolated subagent, so more of it enters context than the 1.0.0 design intended. That's an accepted cost of correctness over context economy, not an oversight; spec writing still isolates its own, typically larger, per-capability file content in a subagent exactly as before, so this cost is confined to the archive step's own scope. Do not work around this by shelling out to openspec-archive-change/openspec bulk-archive directly instead of the openspec-archive-change/openspec-bulk-archive-change skill — the skill is where OpenSpec's own delta-spec comparison and edge-case judgment actually live (bulk-archive's conflict resolution isn't reproducible with a bare CLI flag), and bypassing it back to a raw CLI call would throw away the same hybrid-agent judgment this skill exists to keep.

7. Determine scope: a single-change archive (openspec-archive-change with a change name) or a bulk archive (openspec-bulk-archive-change) spanning several pending changes.

8. Known interactive prompt — always sync. openspec-archive-change and openspec-bulk-archive-change will, more often than not, pause mid-run to ask whether to sync. Always answer yes, every time it comes up — this is a routine part of the archive operation completing, not a decision point that needs the user's input. This is the one interactive prompt you always answer yourself.

9. Run the appropriate skill invocation:

For single change:

Invoke the openspec-archive-change skill.

<change-name>

For bulk archive:

Invoke the openspec-bulk-archive-change skill.

10. If the run branches internally — most commonly by handing off to a separate sync skill partway through — that's normal, expected shape for this command, not a sign that anything has gone wrong or that the task is finished. Stay with it: once the branch completes, pick back up with archive's own remaining steps (merging delta specs into the main specs, moving the change into openspec/changes/archive/) rather than treating the branch's completion as the end of this section.

11. If any other interactive prompt comes up — most commonly openspec-bulk-archive-change asking for confirmation before merging changes that touch overlapping specs — that's a real question only the user can answer, unlike the routine sync prompt in step 8. Surface it to the user directly and wait for their answer before continuing.

12. Wait until every merge in this operation has fully resolved. For a bulk archive, this means ALL changes in the batch, not just the first.

13. If ANY merge reports unresolved conflicts, STOP immediately. Do not attempt to resolve it, and do not proceed to step 14 for ANY change in this batch — a partial extraction is worse than none, since there's no way to tell a stalled batch from a clean one otherwise. Report the conflict verbatim to the user and stop. Do not proceed to validation — parsing anything out of a partially-merged batch would propagate garbage into every capability the batch touches.

14. For each change that archived successfully, read its design.md frontmatter from its new archived path (e.g. openspec/changes/archive/2026-03-02-add-live-sync/design.md) and build one record:

{
  change: "add-live-sync",
  date: "2026-03-02",           // from the archive folder's own
                                 // YYYY-MM-DD prefix, NEVER from
                                 // anything inside design.md
  archivePath: "openspec/changes/archive/2026-03-02-add-live-sync/",
  specsTouched: ["sync/protocol", "ui/status-indicator"],
  decisions: [{ id: "D1", choice: "polling with 5s interval", ... }]
}

15. Keep the list of records from step 14, grouped by change, for validation — plus an explicit note to yourself that no unresolved conflicts remain.

Output: one record per archived change (change, date, archivePath, specsTouched, decisions), held in this context and passed straight to the validation step.

Validate Extracted Records

Goal: confirm archive records are structurally sound before cross-link computation depends on them — a sanity check on what was extracted, not a re-verification of the source data (preflight Task A already confirmed the source design.md frontmatter was well-formed before archive ran).

16. Confirm every record has a non-empty specsTouched and at least one decisions entry with choice populated. If a record is missing either, something went wrong building it during archive (not in the original data, which Task A already validated) — re-run archive for that change rather than proceeding with a partial record.

17. Keep records grouped by change, exactly as returned. Cross-link computation computes pairs within a single change's own specsTouched — two unrelated changes archived in the same bulk-archive batch don't imply their capabilities co-touch each other, even though they landed at the same moment.

Output: the same record set from archive, confirmed structurally complete and ready for cross-link computation and INDEX appending.

Compute Cross-Links (All-Pairs Union)

Goal: for each change, compute the symmetric co-touch pairs within its own specs_touched, and combine those pairs across every change in this archive operation into one set of newly-contributed partners per capability. This step touches zero files — it only combines the specsTouched lists already sitting in the validated records. Merging those new partners with whatever related: entries a spec already has (never dropping any of them) happens during spec writing, inside the subagent that's already opening that file — there's no reason for the parent to read spec frontmatter just to seed a union that spec writing can do in the same breath as its own file read.

18. For a change with specs_touched: [A, B, C], the contributed pairs are all 2-combinations excluding self: (A,B), (A,C), (B,C). Co-touch has no direction — pairing (A,B) means A gains B as a related partner and B gains A in the same step.

19. This is a pure computation with no dependency on file I/O, so it's worth writing as a small pure function rather than eyeballing it per capability:

type ChangeLink = {
  readonly change: string;
  readonly specsTouched: readonly string[];
};

// All 2-combinations within one change's specs_touched. Pure, no self-pairs,
// no directionality — a co-touch relationship reads the same both ways.
const pairsFromChange = (
  link: ChangeLink,
): ReadonlyArray<readonly [string, string]> =>
  link.specsTouched.flatMap((a, i) =>
    link.specsTouched.slice(i + 1).map((b) => [a, b] as const),
  );

// Fold every change's pairs into one partner-set-per-capability map. This
// starts from an empty map every time — it combines pairs ACROSS the
// changes in this batch, not against a spec's on-disk related: list. That
// merge is deliberately left to spec writing, which is the step that opens the file.
const accumulateNewPartners = (
  pairsByChange: ReadonlyArray<ReadonlyArray<readonly [string, string]>>,
): ReadonlyMap<string, ReadonlySet<string>> => {
  const next = new Map<string, Set<string>>();
  for (const pairs of pairsByChange) {
    for (const [a, b] of pairs) {
      next.set(a, (next.get(a) ?? new Set()).add(b));
      next.set(b, (next.get(b) ?? new Set()).add(a));
    }
  }
  return next;
};

20. Fold every change's pairs into the same accumulating map, starting from empty — a bulk-archive batch of three changes touching overlapping capabilities should have all three changes' pairs combined before spec writing ever touches a file, so each capability's subagent is invoked once with a complete new-partner list rather than three times with partial data.

21. Hand this map to spec writing as-is — unsorted and unmerged with any spec's existing related: list. The spec-writing subagent is responsible for both the merge (union with whatever's already in the file) and the final alphabetical sort, since it's the one that actually reads the file this all depends on.

Output: a map of capability -> newly contributed partner names, not yet merged with any spec's existing related: list and not yet sorted — both of those happen during spec writing.

Write Spec Frontmatter and Body (Subagent, Always)

Goal: merge newly contributed partners into each touched spec's existing related: list, persist that plus provenance into frontmatter, and regenerate the ## Related Specs section to match.

Always spawn one subagent per touched capability to do this — every time, not conditionally on how many capabilities are involved. Each capability's edit is fully independent once the new-partner map is fixed (the same independence accelint-qrspi-apply relies on to parallelize slices), and doing the read/merge/write inside a subagent keeps that spec's full contents out of the parent's context whether this is a one-capability archive or a forty-capability bulk-archive. Making this a threshold-based judgment call ("parallelize if there are many capabilities, otherwise just edit inline") means the parent's context cost varies run to run for no good reason; delegating unconditionally makes it flat. It also means this subagent, not the parent, is the one place that ever reads a spec's current related: value — which is exactly why the merge-with-existing-entries logic belongs here rather than in cross-link computation.

22. For each touched capability, spawn a subagent with this prompt (the parent supplies only the newly contributed partner names from cross-link computation — not a final list; the subagent is the one that merges those against whatever the file already has):

Update openspec/specs/<capability>/spec.md only. Do not touch any other file.

Read this file's current related: value from its frontmatter (treat it as
empty if the file has no frontmatter yet — this may be a brand-new
capability). Union it with these newly contributed partners:
[<partner>, <partner>, ...]. Never drop an entry that was already there.
Sort the resulting full set alphabetically and write it in flow style on
one line — that's what keeps a no-op run byte-identical and a genuine
addition a clean one-line diff.

Also set:
  last_touched_by: <change-name>
  last_touched_on: <date>
as plain overwrites of whatever was there before, not an accumulated
history.

Do NOT add capability or purpose fields. The capability name is this
file's own path; purpose already lives in its ## Purpose or ### Purpose heading.

Then regenerate the ## Related Specs section in the body from the same
final, sorted related: list (replace any existing ## Related Specs
content entirely — this section is never hand-maintained).

For each partner in the sorted related: list, read its spec.md file to
extract the purpose heading text. Check for these headings in order:
- ## Purpose or ### Purpose
- ## Overview or ### Overview

Use whichever is found first (Overview and Purpose are semantically equivalent).
Format each line as:

  - [<partner>](../<partner>/spec.md) - <Purpose or Overview heading text>

Example format (one entry per line, alphabetically sorted by partner name):

  ## Related Specs

  - [auth-session-store](../auth-session-store/spec.md) - Secure session token storage and retrieval
  - [sync-protocol](../sync-protocol/spec.md) - Defines the live-sync wire protocol for real-time updates

The format is: markdown link with partner name as link text, relative
path to its spec.md, then space-dash-space (not em-dash), then the
first sentence or paragraph from that partner's purpose heading (## Purpose, ### Purpose, ## Overview, or ### Overview).

If no ## Related Specs heading exists, insert one at the end of the file.

Report back ONLY: the file path, whether the write was a no-op
(byte-identical to what was already there) or an actual change, the
final related: list you wrote, and an index-ready purpose summary for
this capability derived from its current heading text (from ## Purpose,
### Purpose, ## Overview, or ### Overview — whichever exists). Use a
single concise sentence suitable for a table cell. Prefer the first
sentence if it is already concise; otherwise compress the heading text
to one sentence. You're not writing this back into the spec — just
reading and compressing it so the parent doesn't have to reopen the
file for index updates. Do not return the file's full contents.

23. If the capability has no prior spec.md (a brand-new capability per preflight step 4), the subagent starts from an empty frontmatter block instead of reading an existing one — same prompt otherwise.

24. Collect each subagent's short report (file, no-op vs. changed, final related: list, and index-ready purpose summary) for index updates and reporting. Index updates reuse the related: and Purpose values directly from this report instead of reopening the file; the final report draws only on the no-op/changed status. Nothing else about the write needs to enter the parent's context — a reported no-op is the expected signal that this capability wasn't actually affected by this batch, not something to double-check by re-reading the file.

Output: every touched capability's spec.md updated in place (existing related: entries preserved, new ones unioned in and sorted), or confirmed unchanged, with only a short status line plus its related:/single-sentence Purpose summary values — the small payload for index updates — entering the parent's context.

Update openspec/specs/INDEX.md

Goal: keep openspec/specs/INDEX.md in sync with what was just written, at the cost of touching only the lines that actually changed — not a re-scan of every capability's spec.md, and not even a full read of specs/INDEX.md itself. The spec-writing subagents already read each touched capability's current related:, last_touched_by, and ## Purpose/### Purpose heading as part of doing their own write, and report those values back — index updates reuse that data directly instead of paying for a second full scan of openspec/specs/. The only time this step looks at capabilities beyond the ones this batch touched, or reads more than a single targeted line of specs/INDEX.md, is when the file doesn't exist yet at all — there's no existing state to patch, and a one-time full build is the right move, not a routine one.

25. The common case — specs/INDEX.md already exists. Don't read the whole file into context to do this — locate and edit only the lines that actually change:

• Existing capability: grep for the line whose first cell exactly matches the capability name (anchored between the leading | and the next |, not a loose substring match — sync/protocol must not match sync/protocol-v2). Replace that single line with the row built from the spec-writing report for that capability (Purpose, related:, last_touched_by). Nothing else in the file is read or touched.
• Brand-new capability (per preflight step 4): grep for capability-name cells to find the first existing row that sorts after the new one alphabetically, and insert the new row immediately before it (or append at the end if it sorts last) with no blank line before or after the insertion. All data rows must remain contiguous with no blank lines between them. This still only touches one new line — locating the insertion point doesn't require loading row content, just the capability-name column.
• Every row for every untouched capability is never opened, matched, or rewritten — not just "left identical" as an outcome of a full rebuild, but literally never touched by this operation.

26. Build each row without cross-row padding — single-space cell separation (| sync/protocol | Defines the live-sync wire proto | ui/status-indicator | add-live-sync |), not aligned to the widest value in each column. The Purpose cell should be a single concise sentence suitable for a table cell, reusing the index-ready summary returned by the spec-writing subagent rather than a full paragraph from the spec heading:

| Capability | Purpose | Related | Last touched by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| sync/protocol | Defines the live-sync wire proto | ui/status-indicator | add-live-sync |
| ui/status-indicator | Renders connection state in UI | sync/protocol | add-live-sync |

Markdown tables render correctly regardless of padding — only the header separator's dash count matters, not whitespace consistency across data rows. Keeping cross-row alignment would mean every row's padding depends on every other row's content length, which forces a full-table rewrite the instant any single row's text changes length — exactly the cost this design exists to avoid. A patched row and its untouched neighbors will look slightly ragged in a raw diff; that's the trade for the diff actually being one line.

27. The bootstrap case — specs/INDEX.md doesn't exist yet. There's no prior state to patch, and patching only the touched rows would permanently omit every untouched capability until each happens to be touched by some future change. List every directory under openspec/specs/, and for each one, read its ## Purpose or ### Purpose heading, related: frontmatter, and last_touched_by directly — a full scan. This runs at most once per project, the first time this skill archives anything against it; every archive after that goes through step 25 instead.

28. Bootstrap case only: write openspec/specs/INDEX.md from the full scan gathered in step 27, using the row format from step 26, with all data rows contiguous and no blank lines between them. If the file already carries a project-specific title or preamble above the table, preserve it. The common case (step 25) has already written its edit directly — there's no separate write step for it.

Output: openspec/specs/INDEX.md, with one line changed or inserted per capability this batch touched (with no blank lines added) and every other line untouched, or built once from every capability project-wide if the file didn't exist yet, with all data rows contiguous and no blank lines between them.

A patched specs/INDEX.md can still drift from reality for reasons outside this skill's control — a spec.md hand-edited outside the archive workflow, a capability directory renamed or deleted directly. This skill doesn't re-derive the whole index every run to catch that. Nothing else currently does either: accelint-archive-synthesis's two checks (decision-drift, structural-coupling) both read specs/INDEX.md as ground truth rather than auditing it against the spec.md files it summarizes. Catching this kind of drift would mean adding an index-reconciliation check to accelint-archive-synthesis — a natural fit for a skill that already exists to do periodic, corpus-wide checks — but that check doesn't exist yet. Until it does, this is an accepted, narrow gap rather than a covered one.

Append to openspec/changes/archive/INDEX.md

Goal: log one durable row per archived change, inserted at the end of the table's existing data rows — never blindly at the end of the file. Unlike specs INDEX updating, this file is history, and history is append-only — never regenerated, never reordered.

29. For each change from validation, construct one row:

| Change | Date | Decision | Specs touched | Status |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| add-live-sync | 2026-03-02 | polling with 5s interval | sync/protocol, ui/status-indicator | current |

• Date is the archive folder's YYYY-MM-DD prefix — the same source used in validation, never anything read out of design.md.
• Decision is a compact archive-index summary derived from decisions[].choice, not a verbatim copy when the source is verbose. Rewrite each choice into the terse fragment style used by existing archive rows. Do not copy rationale, alternatives, examples, caveats, or explanatory prose into the index. If a change recorded more than one decision, normalize each choice first, then concatenate them with semicolons (e.g. polling with 5s interval; client-side dedup on reconnect) rather than picking just one.
• Status is written as current and this skill never touches that column again after this initial write, for this row or any other. Transitions like current → superseded belong to accelint-archive-synthesis, which has the cross-change context needed to know when a decision has actually been superseded — this skill only ever sees one archive operation at a time and can't safely make that call.

30. Locate the insertion point — the end of the table data rows, with no blank lines between rows. Find the header row (| Change | Date | ... |), its separator (| --- | --- | ... |), and the contiguous block of data rows that follows. Insert the new row(s) immediately after the last of those data rows, with no blank line before the new row. All data rows must be contiguous with no blank lines between them — blank lines between entries corrupt the table structure and must never be written. This applies to both changes/archive/INDEX.md and specs/INDEX.md.

31. Never write metadata or summary content after either INDEX.md table. Both openspec/changes/archive/INDEX.md and openspec/specs/INDEX.md may have a markdown header/preamble before the table (e.g., "# Capability Specifications Index" or "# Archive Index" followed by a brief description), which must be preserved if present. After the preamble comes the table (header row, separator row, and data rows), and the file ends immediately after the last data row. Do not write any of these common but forbidden trailing elements after the table:

• "Total Changes: N" or similar row counts
• "Generated: YYYY-MM-DD" or similar timestamps
• "Status Legend:" or similar explanatory text
• Horizontal rules (---) after the table
• Any other prose, metadata, or summary content

If such trailing content exists in either file from a prior run, delete it. The canonical INDEX.md format is: optional preamble, then table, then end-of-file. Nothing may appear after the last data row.

32. This is the one file in this skill's output that may not exist yet before the very first archive — create it with a header row and separator row (and no trailing content) if missing.

33. Do not re-sort, reformat, or otherwise touch any existing row. The append-only discipline here is what makes this file a reliable audit trail; reordering past rows would make it impossible for anyone to use git blame to see when a decision was recorded relative to the others around it.

Output: openspec/changes/archive/INDEX.md, with one new row per archived change inserted immediately after the last data row with no blank line before it, every prior row untouched, all data rows contiguous with no blank lines between them, and no metadata or summary content after the table — the file ends immediately after the last data row.

Report

34. Summarize what changed:

✅ Archive complete: add-live-sync

Specs updated:
- sync/protocol        (+ui/status-indicator)
- ui/status-indicator  (+sync/protocol)

openspec/specs/INDEX.md updated (2 rows patched)
openspec/changes/archive/INDEX.md: 1 row appended

Next steps:
- Review the diff on touched specs before committing
- related: entries are additive only here — if one looks wrong,
  pruning is accelint-archive-synthesis's job, not this skill's

35. If any capability was left with a placeholder purpose or skipped entirely because preflight Task B never resolved, call that out explicitly h

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