OutlineDriven Clean and true
Contract
| Field | Bound contract |
|---|---|
| Trigger | Fires automatically after editing a durable artifact, or when the user says "clean and true", "run the hygiene pass", or "taste your own output". |
| Authority | Reversible local: writes only the just-changed durable artifact; rollback is restoring that artifact's prior on-disk content. No VCS, credential, paid, published, deployed, or remote mutation. |
| Side effect | May revise the just-changed local artifact through applicable hygiene passes only. |
| Done | Every applicable hygiene route ran or has a stated skip reason; findings are applied or explicitly deferred; no-op when nothing improves. |
Inputs
- The just-changed durable artifact (path or content). Must be supplied.
- The set of hygiene passes available in the session. Optional; a pass absent from the session is skipped with a stated reason.
Procedure
Identify the just-changed durable artifact and bound scope to it; do not read or edit any other file. Done when: the artifact is identified and scope is bounded to it.
Classify what changed in the artifact and route to the hygiene pass the change earned:
What changed Hygiene route Skip when Drifted prose that reads as sediment Rewrite as a clean v0 from current truth No sediment accumulated Padded prose whose every rule still binds Debloat: cut what no rule depends on Nothing padded to cut Anything a stranger must understand alone Cold-read for standalone clarity Short-lived or author-only A reality-grounded claim Verify the claim both ways No such claim present A truth duplicated across places SSOTize: fold into one home, point the rest at it A single home already holds it Voice, tells, or stack residue in prose Strip tells and restore voice Not prose, or not stale Done when: each change is classified and routed to its hygiene pass or marked with a skip reason.
Run each routed pass over the artifact. Skip any pass not available in the session with a stated reason. Done when: every routed pass is run or skipped with a reason.
Apply the findings to the artifact in this session. Done when: findings are applied to the artifact or explicitly deferred with a reason.
If a pass finds no genuine improvement, leave the artifact unchanged for that route. Done when: each route is confirmed as applied, deferred, or no-op.
Failure and recovery
- No applicable route: state that no hygiene route earned a run and leave the artifact unchanged; this is not an error.
- Routed pass unavailable in session: skip it with a stated reason and continue the remaining routes; the partial result is the set of routes that ran.
- Routed pass reports a finding that cannot be safely applied: defer it with a stated reason rather than widen scope or invent a fix.
- Non-mutation rule: never edit files outside the just-changed artifact; recovery is the prior on-disk content of that artifact.
Output
The revised artifact with findings applied, plus a per-route record stating whether each route ran, was skipped (with reason), or was deferred (with reason); if a pass finds no genuine improvement, it changes nothing.